From December 29, 2024
A man walked into a bank a few days ago in Loveland, Colorado, and tried to rob it,,, but the teller couldn’t read his holdup note. As the teller struggled to decipher it, the would-be robber lost patience and walked out empty-handed. Police are still looking for him.
But dig this scene from Woody Allen’s 1970 comedy, Take the Money and Run. Art anticipates real life!
And they said a nice legible handwriting was a luxury…
I confess: I’m guilty of awful handwriting. I grew up with a keyboard long before it was a thing on these phones—my older brother taught me programming (“coding” now) when he got his first computer, the TRS-80, so I learned QWERTY and neglected my penmanship. It shows.
I’ll bet mine is just as awful…. and we didn’t have computers.
I’ll take you up on that bet, Lee. I have a hard time reading my own printing, unless I slow down to calligraphic speeds. My cursive is essentially a scrawl, that even I can’t decipher, at all. As the clip above so well illustrates, my career path automatically had to exclude bank robbing. 🙂
I’m completely dis graphic, and can barely read my own printing, having given up on cursive long ago. It’s just not in me, because I write too fast. Computers changed my life, because it was the first time I could express myself in written words, with any hope of having someone read it. It sure made school a tough proposition.
My longhand is bad, but I will not type the first draft of any novel on a computer. It would be much too fast! When creating… slow down.
I can understand that. I actually type poorly enough that I have time to think, even when writing on a computer. I use an iPad well over 90% of the time that I am on a computer, and when using that, I hold it in horizontal orientation with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers of both hands, typing with my thumbs, which I can do rapidly.
I know literally nothing about iPads, and can’t imagine typing with my thumbs. How in the world do you do that?
The iPad is a great invention. Basically a small computer screen which pops up an on-screen keyboard which you can use to enter keystrokes. It is rare for me to be more than four feet away from my iPad, because I use it to communicate. The email notifying me that you replied to my post arrived on the iPad, I clicked a link in the email, which took me directly to this thread, and the reply window popped up, along with the on-screen keyboard, which I can reach with my thumbs, to enter keystrokes for my reply. It’s actually pretty easy.
Hilarious clip.
I used to really like Woody Allen movies, but now that it has come out what a creep he is – I pass.
Ditto here… But you have to admit that was a very funny scene. And back in 1970, few of us knew Woody Allen was a creep.
We need more comedians like Larry Fine.
How much longer before even basic printing will no longer be taught in schools? I’m betting not long.
I have always printed, because my cursive writing is completely illegible. One teacher told me I was probably the only kid to come out of the Elizabeth public school system without a penmanship certificate. I
I was called lazy by teachers because of my writing. I’d go home and try to improve, but the only way I could write legibly in longhand was to literally draw each character, like a calligrapher.
I completely understand.
Speaking only for myself, the education system failed me, miserably. Testing proved that ai had high potential, but in all earnestness, they took 12 year of time to teach me what I easily could have learned in two or three years. I would have been much better off spending an hour or two per day on core subjects, learning to type instead of being harangued and at times publicly shamed for being dysgraphic, and would have benefitted greatly from being able to pursue interests; a simple electrical lab which operated at safe voltage levels, fixing bicycles and getting an head-start on my musical interests, instead of waiting until 6th grade.
Such simple practical steps would have opened up my interests at an early age and made me pursue even difficult subjects with deeper commitment. I can offer no greater proof than what happened after high school, when I pursued music, learning from college texts, and progressing rapidly. The same thing happened a few years later, when I was able to fund my interest in aviation, learning in a purely merit based Part 61 flight school. At the end of the day, I became an autodidact, and was able to pursue serious technical interests much more quickly than the pace of most formal classwork.
This is only part of the reason that I am a big believer in home schooling.
If it had been available to me, I probably would have been able to keep up with my grade level spending an hour or two per day. Most of my school years were spent very bored.
I think you and I would have been much better off.
I once did some work with a retired teacher. He readily admitted that the schools only taught 2-3 years of material over a 12 year span. He didn’t care for my sentiments on public education.
I’m surprised he defended it.
He was not an impressive person.