My brother 
My mother taught me to read and write.
She taught us all. I mention this because there is a bit of an age gap between my brother and I and while his writing compared to others was apples to apples - mine was apples to oranges. Because in the writing classes at school where they taught the shapes and distances on paper with special lines and what not, the style of writing changed between when he went to school, and when I went to school. Cursive was the norm for him, but for me, the cursive turned into some kind of big bubble writing that was more akin to comic sans than beautiful handwriting.
As said, my mother taught me.
She wrote in old cursive, with flowing lines and loops and intricacies that while unnecessary, were beautiful and added flair and emotion. The modern writing style I was learning and did in the lessons, was garish, ugly, and artless. It was functional, but it lacked feeling. And the conformity of it across the student population was a start of the continued drive for consolidation of thought of the masses, where everyone has to do the same, and think the same.
Fuck that.
But, in the writing classes I learned the bubble letters that looked like the average American, so that I could get my "pen license". This was a stupid certificate for those who could write well enough to transition into using pen, instead of pencil in year three - so at about eight years old. I was the second in the class to get mine - because Abbey was the teacher's pet.
Even at eight - she looked like an experienced librarian.
But while I got my pen license, I didn't actually write that way, and the next year it became a problem. We had a term-long project (10 weeks) in the class, that amounted to about 30 pages of pictures and text based on Australian geography and history and the like. It was a lot of research (encyclopaedias at the time) and a huge amount of writing - relative for a nine year old kid.
Mine was great!
The problem was, that when I got it back from grading, it wasn't accepted, because I wrote in flowing script, not comic sans bubble letters. I said, my parents taught me to read and write and I asked,
"Can you read it?".
My teacher, who was likely in her mid-forties at the time could read it no worries, because that is how she had learned to write herself, but it wasn't the "accepted" way to write, so she said that I would fail, unless I wrote it again. I of course argued that the project isn't about the way I write, but the information itself, and since she could read it, there shouldn't be an issue. This was unacceptable, and I had to write it all out again.
Fuck the establishment!
I wrote it all again.
I had a week to do it. And this time, I made sure that my handwriting was even better than before, still in flowing script, complete with loops and unnecessary intricacies. And at the end of the week, I handed it in to the teacher, who looked at it and I could see the blood pouring into her face like everything from the rest of her body had been squeezed up to the top, like rolling a tube of toothpaste.
She exploded.
She screamed and shouted about my insolence and how she is going to fail me for the term and all of the rest that went along with it. She also would call my mother and talk to her about how I haven't done what I was told to do and how unacceptable it was. While this wasn't a pleasant experience, I was still defiant and even as a kid, I was pretty pragmatic with this kind of thing - this is primary school, it isn't that serious.
So, my mother was called into the school to have a conversation with the teacher, and while I stood there, the teacher explained to my mother the assignment, me writing it in inappropriate cursive, then rewriting it in the same way, even though I was told to write in the accepted form, and how she is going to have to fail me for the project because I didn't do what I was told and it kept going.
My mother sat patiently listening.
And when the teacher had finished her rant, asked,
Can you read it?
My mother wasn't supportive in many ways, but she always had my back when authority tried to force me to conform to imaginary standards.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
