prompt: stage, title: for his age in misc. flash fiction

“Your son is a wonderful writer for his age,” Miss Sobiecki told my parents or at least something approximate to that through thirtyish years of gauzy memory, “but that doesn’t mean I can read a single word of his chickenscratch.” It was my folks’ first parent-teacher conference in my middle school career, I guess that would make it 1990, maybe 1991. “I’ve asked him to print by hand for the time being but you really need to get him a word processor and typing lessons as soon as you possibly can. To give him credit, it’s a wonder he can even read his own script.” And so they did.

And it’s fair, my cursive was absolutely abysmal and has only deteriorated with three decades of disuse. I am heavily left-handed and I never really stumbled across anyone with the expertise for teaching a child left-handed cursive. Never found that with pianos either, even though my father was a brilliant pianist and my little brother plays a mean guitar. Penmanship and gym class were my only grades below B-plus until college. I was, however, a solid D student at running laps and drafting, the former tended to give me diarrhea, the latter ink abominations merely looked like it.

I learned how to type on a monochrome Brother word processor that looks positively Flintstone to anyone born in the 21st century, but it served me well, and when I was done with high school, I could type at what was considered the low-end of secretarial skill at the time, sixty-something words a minute. More than anything, however, Miss Sobiecki accidentally set the stage for my internet addiction, because when we finally got online in 1996, not everyone was ready for the jump to typing everything. I was prepared for the digital age that came faster and weirder than most had ever anticipated, but that’s the story of my life. In the weird place at the weird time.

It’s not just the stories we tell. It’s also how those stories are shaped by our forms of expression. It’s not just what we write, it’s how we write. It’s not just whether we win or lose, it’s why we fight. As I slump deeper into middle age, of course, the times of the keyboards have passed me by and I’m left to sloppily try and express myself with fat thumbs on a tiny smartphone screen. Adapted to the typing form, when a laptop goes on the fritz, it feels like someone has chopped off my very hands, I’m so used to being able to channel the song of my soul through that path.

These choices we make, the compromises forced upon us, the changes we readily or reluctantly endure, these are the things that aggregate within us and pebble by pebble, grain by grain, form that unwieldy uniqueness we call “Self”. Who would I have been if everything had come easy? Probably wouldn’t’ve held steady as a wonderful writer for my steady-advancing age, anyway.