Just sign your John Hancock…

I think I’ll start today with something we can add to the “Things People Will Spend Money For” category.

According to the Associated Press, there are people, apparently quite a few of them, who are hiring calligraphers to help them upgrade their signature. You know, how they sign their names.

Like this is something folks can’t do for themselves. In fact, it’s something which folks have done for themselves, many times. It’s probably been going on since pen first dipped into ink.

Not that it would do me any good. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

It all goes back to my second grade class, when we were taught what I called “real writing,” because I never could remember “cursive.” And besides, “cursive” sounded like the kind of stuff my folks were always telling me I shouldn’t say.

I’ll never forget the weeping and wailing – or at least, the moaning and groaning – my classmates and I uttered when we were told that after a certain date, everything we handed in was to be written in curses – I mean, cursive. See how easily it was to get confused. “Real writing” was easier to remember and sounded nicer.

Anyway, some of us, naturally, proved better at this than others. I was not among the beautifully writing few. But eventually, I got to the point that I could do it well enough to pass.

Once we had actually been using cursive for a while, some of the more artistic or adventurous among us began experimenting with writing styles, including signatures. I believe they were inspired by the photos of John Hancock’s bold signature on the Declaration of Independence.

I did some experimenting, myself, to little avail. I remember my fourth-grade teacher telling me that my writing looked like “chicken scratch.” Some family members suggested that with my handwriting, I should become a doctor.

And I’ll never forget the year that I suffered through Spelling and Penmanship, a semester of each. To this day, I’m far from the world’s greatest speller, and my “chicken scratch” has dumfounded more than one professor.

In fact, my handwriting has been known to dumbfound even me. I often had to recopy notes before I forgot what I heard, because I might not be able to read them later. My brain tended to move faster than my pen hand, and the more ahead my brain got, the worse my penmanship got as my hand tried desperately to keep up.

I was saved by two things: Portable recording devices, and keyboards. I, like many others, have sometimes wished I had taken shorthand when I took typing. But I wonder if my shorthand would have been any more legible than my chicken scratch? I’ll never know.

I get the feeling that these folks who are paying to have their signatures remade for them are wanting to show off. But not only do they have to pay, they have to practice, practice, practice – just as they would have to if they were doing their own upgrade.

As for me, I can usually slow down enough to get my signature signed in legible fashion. And I can sometimes write in a readable fashion, if I take my time. But I’m much better, and faster, with a keyboard.

When I was interviewing someone on the phone in the old days, I would type out the answers, and although I made mistakes, they were legible mistakes and I could easily correct them.

I still envy people with nice handwriting. My mom’s handwriting was both beautiful and legible, two things that don’t always go together; I’ve seen some beautiful handwriting that I couldn’t make out to save me.

•••••

I know there are those who will disagree with me on this, but it was with relief that I read about Sirhan Sirhan being denied parole, again.

For those who don’t remember, Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy in 1968.

There are people who, in my opinion, if not executed, should die in jail. Sirhan Sirhan is one of those. He should die as Charles Manson did (I hope folks remember him) and as did Susan Atkins, one of Manson’s accomplices. Patricia Krenwinkle and Leslie Van Houton, two other so-called “Manson Women” are still in jail. Yet another, Linda Kasabian, was granted immunity for giving testimony at the trial. She died recently.

Another of Manson’s women, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who attempted to assassinate President Jerry Ford, was paroled and shouldn’t have been.

I realize that many people believe these folks are no longer a danger. But I remember those times. I remember the horror of what they did. I remember wondering if the entire world was going insane. John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, the Tate-LaBianca murders (Manson’s doing). The people who did those things should never go free.