Posted by:
Beth
(
)
Date: October 09, 2020 02:29AM
Maybe back in April, I'd have to check my Amazon List of Useless Purchases to be certain, I decided that I would write lovely letters to friends with whom I'd fallen out of touch. This endeavor required the purchase of proper stationery and a proper pen suitable for left-handed writers who smudge ink due to hook hand. I decided to be honest with myself and skip the calligraphy pens. My middle school offered a class in calligraphy where they unsuccessfully tried to break me of my left-handed hook. We purchased nibs and India ink, because calligraphy, and the instructor would not allow me to rotate the paper so that I was writing below the line as opposed to across it. I boo that instructor, but I had an epiphany: Hebrew and Arabic may have been created by lefties who realized that writing from right to left, as opposed to from left to write, was the ticket. I have no basis for this opinion other than it makes sense to me, a lefty, who would no longer have to deal with the ink smudge across the paper and a dirty hook hand. It happens with pencils. It happens with markers. It happens with chalk on a black board. It happens with dry erase markers. I've lived 50+ years of smudged class notes and generally unintelligible penmanship. It's hard to live in a right-handed world.
I learned to sew when I was seven years old. This was before The Left Handed Shop opened, and closed, on Pier 49. This was before Ned Flanders made the plight of the left-handed a cause célèbre. Until then, no one cared about our pain. There were no left-handed or uni-handed scissors. The clothes iron electrical cord did not attach to the back of the iron; it attached to the right side causing horrific yanking and wrinkling of fabric as one tried to press seams. I left the world of cheap aluminum Kindergarten scissors and entered the right-centric world of molded pinking shears designed solely for The Right.
And what's up with "a scissor" opposed to "the scissors"? Who are these A People? Just another way to keep the lefties down.
Then there's knitting. I was even younger when I learned to knit and crochet. My preschool teacher was crocheting while we were at recess on the scary-ass astroturf row home roof that somehow was approved for four-year-old play. Mrs. Cross, who lived up to her perpetually-pissed name, taught me how to crochet - as a righty does. My great aunt, Ida Dear, who did *not* live up to her soubriquet, started teaching me how to knit when I was about six years old...as a righty. Field hockey sticks? Made for short righties who can run in a crouched position. Old-timey wooden lacrosse sticks? Righties. Ugh.
So nix the calligraphy for my proper COVID letters and, hello! Second sheets, anyone? Remember those? Not a second sheet to be found for my proper stationery.
But I found a somewhat proper pen for my COVID letters.
Time to write! Which meant time to track down people with whom I'd lost touch. Annnd then I thought about how creepy it would be if someone I'd forgotten even *existed* looked me up on the internet and sent me a letter. Stalkery for sure. Then I thought, "Hmmm...I bet there is a damn good reason we fell out of touch." Inxnay on the etterslay.
Great. Glad I didn't spring for sealing wax. <-- Hey! It was the only adult-sanctioned use of fire in my house. I sealed the shit out of some letters. And The Great Blue Marble hooked me up with a pen pal in England who wrote the dates of her letters all funny, in the wrong place, with an address(!) at the top of the letter, and she wrote weird words. Sadly, I didn't live up to the pal part of the bargain, and Great Blue Marble wouldn't let me exchange her for someone who wrote American in a poor hand like I did. I wonder how she's doing. I should look her up.
So, yeah. No COVID letters were written until two weeks ago. Months before, my mother asked me to send her some iridescent feathers when my ducks molted. Actually, she wanted my to pick some from a live duck. That didn't happen.
Eventually my ducks molted, and I found some lovely black feathers with iridescent shades of green, blue, and purple. Hurrah! But how do you send feathers in the mail? You Google "origami envelope," grab some printer paper, cut it into something resembling a square with your right-handed Fiskars, fold an envelope, squeeze those feathers in there, find a piece of sturdy junk mail stock, cut that to fit a #10 envelope, and send your mom duck feathers shoved in a printer paper origami envelope shoved into a #10 envelope that has been reinforced with Burger King coupons.
And you forget to enclose a note.
Off it goes into the wild with two forever stamps because who knows how much that Rube Goldberg thing weighs, and you wait. And you wait. And you wait until your mom calls you thrilled by not only the feathers that she WEARS in her HAIR, but she tells you that she's going to figure out how you folded that envelope that came with the Burger King junk mail coupons.
You decide it's time to break out the proper stationery, but you've misplaced your proper pen. You write a smudged letter apologizing for the smudges and then you realize you tossed the other feathers you found because Mom made you mad. Damn. But she liked that piss-poor envelope you folded, so you go back to Amazon and look for proper origami paper, read about proper origami paper, realize that you can't leap from printer paper to washi paper, you are NOT a MacArthur Genius paper folder, so you spring for the cheap stuff that smells like a chemical factory.
You fold an itty bitty kimono in lieu of feathers, throw that thing in an A2 envelope that came with the stationary with no second sheets and you forget to mail it for a week. You write another letter and fold the saddest lighthouse ever. As I write this, the letter is on my left, lonely and unposted.
This evening I folded the UGLIEST butterfly on too-big paper. I think that smaller is better in paper folding.
And now it's time to break the seal and grab another beer before my second attempt at folding a freaking butterfly, this time with smaller paper.
N.B. Don't accidentally chew your meds. Swallow.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2020 03:05AM by Beth.