WELL DONE, GOOD AND USELESS SERVANT

             No matter what AARP claims, eventually we turn into a pile of unusual skin formations and obsolescent skills. Their magazine shows “mature” folks, thin and tan, leaning off the edge of a sailboat, reeling in lines and smiling. We all know those spiffy deck shoes are hiding bunions like radishes and heel skin they have to attack with a cheese grater. We can try to keep up, but a three-year-old can convert document formats faster than we can pull on our socks. It’s not just a matter of losing physical prowess. Many skills I have valued my entire life have lost their value in society. 

In country school, cursive penmanship was a subject equal in stature to math, language, and social studies. We had workbooks with two solid lines and a dotted line in the center. We drew hundreds of miles of loops and slanted lines. Capital letters could never extend beyond the line nor fail to reach it. Small case letters reached the dotted line in the center. Angles had to be consistent.  I worked a long time on making the W in my name more dramatic than a round, squat, common sort of letter. And now, I hear people saying cursive writing is obsolete and will not be taught any more. I see younger people with claws awkwardly clenched over the top of a pen, printing like we did on the back of a Valentines card in second grade. We’ve gone from appreciating “a beautiful hand” to tapping away on screens with our opposable thumbs, a skill we share with apes, some frogs, koalas, pandas, possums, opossums, and even some birds. When you get the mail, as you sift through catalogues, flyers from realtors, grocery coupons and such, if there’s a handwritten letter, how fast do you drop the other stuff and open it? As my friend Judi often says, “Sigh.”

            Studying grammar made the world and my brain more orderly. In grade school, we raced to diagram sentences. By sixth grade, we were challenging one another with the most complex sentences we could invent, and the blackboards were covered with beautiful maps of our language. I will never stop twitching when I hear  “fewer” and “less” misused. I drive by billboards that make me want to scream; the world has abandoned adverbs. “Think uncommon” a university tells potential students racing down the interstate. I am aware of the prejudices that accompany my assumptions when I hear someone butchering the language. To me, proper grammar is like a sock drawer with socks properly paired as opposed to tangled with some “forever singles” and a couple of rogue knee-highs.

            When I learned to drive, I  crawled around our tiny town with its one stop light with a death grip on the steering wheel. There was no power steering, and the car was a stick shift. Unfortunately, the test for my license took place in busy Ann Arbor at 5:00 pm on a Friday. First, I turned right out of the left lane. Then, I turned left out of the center lane. The cop shook his head and looked sad. We were on Main Street, and I’d never seen such traffic and so many lanes. Then, he said, “Let’s parallel park.” I had never done that–just seen the diagram in my driver’s ed manual. The parking spot he chose was two inches longer than the car. I pulled even with the front car and slid right into the space on the first try. The surprised cop applauded. On the other hand, it took thirty minutes and approximately 300 turns of the wheel to get out of that spot. He gave me a mercy license. Now, I consider parallel parking one of my best talents; I can get in and out of a small place in one try with few exceptions. In college I had a $90 Studebaker Lark. The price was so reasonable because it did not have reverse. I’d pull even with the front car, and my roommate, Elaine, would get out and push me backwards as I steered into the parking place. I had to get it on the first try because Elaine was not interested in multiple attempts. And now? Now what do they do? Make self-parking cars! That’s an insult. Have they no pride? Pikers.

            How can I remain proud of my ability to rock a car out of any snowbank when even the most boring old-people cars are 4WD? How can I experience the thrill of building a gorgeous fire on the first try when you can toss in a noxious chemical block that explodes like the Chicago fire? No one cares if I can nurse along a tiny flame, nudging the kindling, gradually creating a slow-burning, glowing fire in the fireplace. And, few people bother writing letters when you can create something on the computer and simply personalize a few sentences at the end. Sigh, indeed.

            Things we older folks were proud of have fallen out of favor or become obsolete. It’s said that “pride goeth before the fall.” More like pride goeth, and then you fall.