Cursive superpowers
The white board was littered with alphabets and numbers. We were discussing the different ways in which people wrote their numerals or alphabets.
“How come nobody seems to like cursive writing as much anymore?” I said, and off we went writing our little cursive numerals and alphabets like artists swirling their best hieroglyphic characters.
“Is that an ‘I’? Truly? I have never seen an ‘I’ like that before!”
“Wow – that ‘J’ is wild! No wonder teachers moved away from cursive. “
“Well, there is a lost skill – imagine the superpowers teachers had deciphering everyone’s handwriting and essays.”
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia anyone?
That was true. It is a superpower. Writing fast was a superpower too, one that was made easier with cursive. How beautifully could we go on in one pen stroke for a word like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis? How many people suffered from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia back then compared to now (fear of long words!)?
“I think in terms of the keyboard locations when I spell a word.” said a much younger colleague, and I drew in a breath – the places where generational differences get you is truly mind-boggling. But then I realized their generation spent more time typing things out in word documents, or in chat screens than any other generation preceding it, and it was only natural for their brain to associate the keyboard with the spellings..
One person said that when they added numbers, they imagined them as dominoes being added together. “Were you a gamer?”
“Yes!” they said, looking a little sheepish.
The Cognitive Processes of our Brains
Truly, the brain is such a multi-layered immensely capable and adaptable organ. Neuroscience must truly be fascinating to study and research. How many visual thinkers were there among other species? What percentage were analytical? Many would possess kinetic intelligence. Once we stop only thinking of the narrow spectrum of human intelligence, the world becomes that many dimensions more fascinating. I peered into the bookshelf at a book that has been on my tsundoku shelf for ages: ‘How the Brain Thinks’ and resolved to read it soon.
The picture of the brain was on the front, and I smiled as I thought of a friend who told me that they don’t like eating cauliflowers because it looks too much like the human brain. What was that type of thinking called? Visual or Associative.
Nourish-n-Cherish 