How many people can you identify by their handwriting?
I could look at a letter today and tell you if my mother wrote it – which is odd because she had perfect handwriting. Perfection by definition means conformance. You’d think all the perfect ones would be indistinguishable. But there was something about the weight of her strokes that set her off.
I could identify if my Dad wrote something, too. He wrote in block letters: small cramped block letters on graph paper for work or listing video titles cross-referenced by number, or big block letters for listing the HOUSE RULES on the back of the lid to the board game.
My brother’s handwriting was atrocious. My grandfather’s was atrocious but in a different way.
When I taught high school, I could identify which students left their notes behind in class, because I gave them so many writing assignments. There was a time I think I could do the same with my friend’s notes.
Now, the only living hand I can identify is Gary’s. It makes me think there’s a special intimacy in knowing someone by their penmanship. I mean, if you were a woman at work and a man publically said, “Hey, you left your [random, unsigned] shopping list in the cafeteria,” would there be gossip? I think there might be.
It’s a little like being in possession of a lady’s handkerchief in Victorian times. Something ordinary that implies a scandalous level of intimacy. And so what’s the tell for the next generation? Identifying a beloved’s phone by the sound it makes when it vibrates?
Today, though, knowing someone’s handwriting is like knowing a birthmark on the back of a thigh.