The Left Handed Gun

Watch how a left-handed person holds a pen - crooked, tight wristed, cockeyed unnatural.  Now hold a mirror to the right side of that hand, to see the image flipped.  That is how I hold my pen.

Writing, my hand is crooked, laying on the paper dragging over the recently penned words.   My tucked fingers and the underside of my palm smear all the words, and sentences.  Thoughts end up smudges on the page, staining my writing hand.  The beautiful act of writing turned grotesque. 

My penmanship is almost unreadable, even to myself.  The keenest of eyes struggle to decipher.  Unevenly, my scribble drags across the page.  By college, the only way anyone could read my handwriting was by writing in capitals.  Each letter attempts uniformity as if I was filling out a crossword puzzle.  Yet, the end result is still insulting to the senses, mocking the very notion of pen to paper. 

Over thirty years ago I taught myself how to hold a pencil by looking at my left hand.  Once learned, change has been impossible. Teachers made me feel as if my ugly writing was a reflection on my intelligence or physical appearance.  Frustrated over my grades and people remarking how impenetrable my writing was, I tried for years to improve my legibility.

As a child, I was naturally a lefty.  I wrote with my left hand, lead with my left foot, went to throw the ball with my left hand, etc.  However, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Elbertson, a former Catholic nun, believed lefties were evil.  Despite living within fifteen miles of cosmopolitan Philadelphia I was a victim of medieval ignorance and stupidity. 
  

My enduring memory of first grade is of mutual dislike.  From the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Elbertson moved me from chair to chair in different aisles so I wouldn’t disrupt the class.  When moving chairs wasn’t enough, my punishment increased to being sent to different corners, keeping me in class during recess, telling me to put my head down on the desk, and so on.  There were strict rules about bathroom breaks, asking questions, when to speak, participate, or interact. 

On St. Patrick’s Day we were given cheap plastic green derbies to wear as a celebration.  The hat was hot and uncomfortable, yet everyone had to wear the hat.  Not wearing the hat broke the rules.  Everyone had to wear the hat.  She launched a tirade at me to go sit in the corner, wear the hat and put my head down cause I was no longer going to participate.  I’m still not sure how I was supposed to wear the hat and put my head down. 

Outside there was a thunderstorm, which created a leak in the ceiling, that ended up dripping exactly on top of my head, pinging off of the green hat I was wearing.  I tried to raise my hand to complain but that made Mrs. Elbertson angrier.  She said I was being punished and was not allowed to raise my hand.  Eventually, the little girl next to me was able to speak up for me and I was moved to the other corner.

As Mrs. Elbertson patrolled the aisles watching us copy elementary letters, words, sentences into our practice books, I dreaded her coming to my desk. She would forcibly switch my writing hands.  There were no words of encouragement or patient moments of reconditioning.  Only a gruff frustrated, “Just do as I tell you.”  She would leave my desk and I would hold two pencils, one in each hand, until my right hand could imitate my left.  Then, I would never hold a pencil in my left again.  I didn’t want her stopping by my desk. 

By the end of the year I was going to the nurses office almost everyday, claiming illness, more often than not headaches, migraines.  At that age, allergies controlled large chunks my life, so there is a possibility I was truthfully sick.  Yet, I think I was stressed from butting heads with a dominant personality, determined to squeeze all the fun out of learning.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to banish Mrs. Elbertson to a large waste bin of mean and incapable teachers.  Her legacy is worse than just my unreadable scrawl. 

As a student I wanted to learn.  I was competitive.  I wanted to be in the smart class, around the smart kids, winning prizes, the honor roll, Principal’s List.  I did extremely well in all classes, mostly “A”s with a few “B”s. 

Yet, in elementary school penmanship was a major gradable category.  My handwriting grades were mostly “C”s, if not worse.  The lower grades denied me being in the top-tiered classes, accelerated programs, awards, recognition.     

I was tracked into classrooms that were slower paced. For long stretches of my education, I was bone achingly bored and frustrated.  I spent hours at home pursuing my own interests, copying pages out of comics, reading higher level books, discovering music and movies.  I enjoyed being creative.  My daydreams were of living in the city, reading, writing, drawing, playing music, being around the people I admired.

However at school, my enthusiasm was met with discouragement.  Unable to draw a straight line, I received poor grades in art classes.  My eighth grade teacher did not know who Albert Camus was.  I was only allowed to continue to take music classes in high school if I participated in marching band.  My eleventh grade English teacher dismissed my journals as meandering, poorly thought out and poorly executed.  My twelfth grade history professor first tried to fail me because she didn’t like the way I kept my notebook, and then accused me of plagiarizing my senior thesis. 

At what should have been a fruitful time to experiment with art, music, writing, I battled my way through a system that I had to no desire or connection to.  The emphasis was placed on regurgitation of facts, obedience, and encouraging those that already showed an acceptable level of promise.

My resentment compounded over years into bitterness and resentment towards primary academia, class systems, institutions, etc. I was considered not as qualified or as creative as other students, despite having taught myself how to write with the unnatural hand.   

The lingering doubts in my abilities led me to abandon my dreams of earning a living in anything creative, including writing.  The establishment, my teachers, had won.

By the time I entered high school, my primary goal was to get into a very good college far away from Southern New Jersey.  I would major in business.  If I had to be an automaton, I wanted to be one that made lots of money.

Even though I was preparing myself for a career in finance, the liberal arts requirements opened a world of possibilities.  I finally found the true encouragement and growth I had been searching for in my philosophy classes, music classes, public speaking, and acting classes. The notions of being perfect mattered little when compared to the energy, enthusiasm and passion for a subject.  Unfortunately, before I could take all the classes I had desired, I graduated. 

College freed me from the oppressive constraints of primary school.  Graduation from college allowed me to attempt to live the life I had daydreamed about as a child.  Once out of school, I became unfettered from the idea that I was required to participate in something in which I had no interest.  After years of battling teachers and institutions over my education, I was now in the position to accept my faults, my passions, my successes, and my failures as my own.

I found out a few years later that throughout my time with her, Mrs. Elbertson was sick, battling cancer.  She died when I was still in elementary school.  I remember feeling relief mixed with bitterness.  She wasn’t kindly nor loving, nothing like the elders I was constantly around, like my grandparents, their friends. Leading a room of thirty-one children appeared beyond her ability.  She was angry, sick and unhappy. Reflecting on my life, I can’t see anything positive about my switching to being right handed.  My handwriting is the enduring scar of her superstitions.