Is the Keyboard Mightier than the Pen?

I am gloating with pride as Little Princess tries her hand at writing her first word – her name –  in lopsided and irregularly formed letters.

“You know my alphabets?” she questions referring to the alphabets that comprise her name.

I wish I could explain that her parents had a big hand in deciding her name but she has given that privilege to the school identity card and uses it for reference.

It is about then that I notice Sid struggling to read his handwritten work. I am caught unawares as my eyes take into the untidy hotchpotch of words that have been scribbled mindlessly. The unrealistic mother inside me who refuses to acknowledge what the eyes see manages to clutch on to a twig of positivity and interpret it as the first step to the long road to becoming a world renowned doctor.

I rush to share my Eureka moment with the husband who seemed nonplussed.  I wonder aloud if the friendly pharmacist downstairs will be able to decode his writing.

“Pharmacists have caught up with the digital era and have stopped playing guess games with sloppy hand-written prescriptions.” he reminds me. “You should buy him a cursive writing book,” he suggests turning his attention back into the digital world.

I wonder if cursive writing books are available in stores these days.

E-mails and texts have replaced snail mail. Perfecting cursive writing is not among the joys of schooling anymore and the digital keyboard has replaced the treasured ‘Hero’ ink pens and Camlin/Nataraj pencils of the pre-digital era.

A cousin who lives in another continent recently shared a picture of his handwritten script on social media.  His perfection for the art and the knowledge that handwritten scripts are going the way of the dinosaurs had garnered his picture more ‘likes’ than he intended. I will have to ask him to e-mail me a copy of his hand written script so that I can treasure it as a relic for the digital world has snatched the joys of handwriting but  made the world a smaller place.

In the meanwhile, I need to download a few cursive writing practice sheets from a student resource website so that my son can at least decipher what he writes.