Regaining my Illiteracy

Fogies like myself - young fogies, I'm not that far along - will talk about how kids these days can not write cursively. They don't know how! I don't know why that is whether they're never taught anymore or whether it's just taught as one of these quaint skills that were used in the olden days, like needle point or repairing wagon wheels or such. Curiously, they also don't know Sanskrit, or how to chisel stone tablets or any other useful skills like that.

Why would they need to write cursively, you ask? Indeed. Why? I happened to write a few books cursively and this was when personal computers were just making the scene and about the best you could do was green writing on a black screen on ... DOS. Remember that, Anyone? Don't look at me like I have two heads. DOS. MS DOS. It was like a computer language and you needed floppies and ...

Oh, forget it.

You do remember it, however, if you're another dinosaur like yours truly. Yes, when Uncle Steve was young typing, thats right, typing was a special skill and if you were lucky you got to do it on an electric typewriter with a correction key. Otherwise you used a lot of correction fluid, like me during my entire college career. Correction fluid was used for correcting back then and not killing brain cells to make yourself happy.

Right now I'm back in school learning twenty first century skills along with the aforesaid kids. I spend hours trying to figure out how to use these programs that they all learned in grade school. The way I yell at my computer, it's a wonder that it even lets me near it.

I've learned a few things - I've had to - but my patience is slight. It really sucks to be taught things by someone half my age. Shouldn't they be looking up to me for my wisdom and knowledge? I swear I have to bite my tongue when I hear the phrase: "That's easy all you have to do is ... " And the explanation that follows is not easy and all I have to do is not all I have to do. But I need to learn this stuff or I am doomed in the present century.

When the kids teach me something new, I always offer to even it up and teach them something that I know in exchange. Somehow they never seem interested in learning to write cursively.