Can You Read This?

You should feel grateful for my mail. The reason is because you get my E mail typed rather than as a handwritten letter. You see, I have terrible handwriting. Just a sentence and a signature on a Christmas card from me is enough to make a Grinch out of the recipient, who uniformly lectures me and asks why I "never learned to write legibly". I have no reply because I n know I have awful handwriting and am clue less as to why.
My mom, dad, brother, and every relative I am aware of had beautiful penmanship. Too, I was taught to write the traditional way (Palmer method) that supposedly produces pretty and readable text. So why am I such a sloppy writer? Some experts say women have prettier and more legible handwriting, but I think women do almost everything better than men. It can't be the explanation for my bad penmanship. I am grateful to not be a doctor, because doctors kill patients with their handwriting. It is often so bad that important directions given by the physician are misread and the patient winds up with a readable tombstone instead of a cure for his or her illness.
Maybe the way one is taught has something to do with readability in handwriting, but I am sure that dexterity and coordination isn't the main factor, Some of the world's best athletes have the worst handwriting and I have known rather dumb people with no sense of coordination who had beautiful handwriting. That makes me think it is a talent. But wait! I read once that painters often have awful handwriting. So legible penmanship can't be a talent. If an artist has the talent to paint and draw it would seem he or she could also write legibly. Another observation I have is that a person can not improve his or her handwriting once past childhood. It is like a personality, in many ways fixed for life. As a teacher I know that kids who have terrible handwriting in first grade also have it in 12th. Long ago I took a course in graphology, handwriting analysis. That taught me that handwriting is related to the personality, even the health and intelligence of the writer. One tenet of graphology is to never judge the writer by how neat his or her writing is. In fact, it is believed that people who write fast and sloppily are often highly intelligent. yet, to get a letter from one of those people might make the reader believe that the writer must be stupid, to write so badly.
On the whole, I think that at least 90 % of the penmanship I have read from others is easier to read than mine (Sometimes I can not even read the notes I left for myself). But this figure should shrink now that computers are the main source of written material. I think kids will probably write less, and be taught proper handwriting more often because they are pushed to type on a computer at such a young age. As fewer people write in script the ability to understand what is written will decrease as well "( Jim's Law"..Ok, I made that up).
This idea goes a long with the concept that writing was better before the invention of the typewriter made it easy to not hand write. In earlier times everyone wrote script frequently, and this made it more legible...practice makes perfect, I think. If you ever read letters from oldies in a library or book you will see they all are beautiful in penmanship. Even the uneducated people could write easy to read text.
I have made my point about this bad handwriting issue, about my awful script. So when you reply, it would be nice if you thanked me for typing my letters Uh, maybe a dozen roses would be nice too.....MAKE SURE YOUR SIGNATURE IS LEGIBLE!