As this holiday season comes racing round the corner and the last Christmas cards are in the mail (unless I get one from you and I didn’t already send you one because I forgot all about you), I feel I must take full responsibility for the problems the U. S. Postal Service is having. All it takes is one look at my awful handwriting on the cards I sent to know that it is so unfair that anyone is expected to decipher the mess and actually deliver it to someone somewhere. And I often scrawl a return address on there–just as a cruel joke, really. From looking at it, you can’t get there from here. Most of my family suffers from the same lack of purty handwriting. I would show you a picture but you wouldn’t know what it was. Thomas Aquinas had some pretty crappy handwriting, it turns out, so that will have to do.

it isn't a sin to have bad handwriting

It does remind me of a time years ago when my son filled out his high school application to a very competitive regional school in handwriting so technically tight and perfect and completely indecipherable. Perhaps because it was microscopic. Especially his name at the top of the application. I don’t exactly remember how well I handled the scene I made in our family room when I looked upon this piece of paper that was to determine oh so much of his future since I knew that an extra application was not going to be easy to come by–pre-download everything off the internet days–and it was due the next day. I  bet I said small words in a big voice–easily decipherable.

So sorry, U. S. Postal Service. You should make me use 3 or 4 stamps per envelope to compensate you for the trouble. Actually, never mind. I’ve stood in my share of eternal lines at the post office, so maybe we’re even.