The Truth About Me

No, I'm not going to tell you the truth about me! Actually, I just wanted to show this handwriting sample from a former friend with whom I've lost contact. "The Truth About Me" is the title of a song from Dance Hall Crashers. (My friend had made a copy of the CD for me and she wrote out all the titles. Recently, during the Great Decluttering of 2009, I came across that CD, so I downloaded it onto Dave's computer and tossed the CD itself. But before that, I took a few photos of her handwriting.)



So, that was seriously how she wrote all the time. All her notes for classes were written that way. All her journals. Everything. She used to, if the paper didn't have lines, use a ruler to keep things straight.

Oddly, I do have a picture of her writing:



I took that photo surreptitiously while we were studying chemistry together in the coffee shop we used to frequent. You can see that she was left-handed. She told me that when she was little, she went to Catholic school and the nuns forced her to write with her right hand. They even had some special device that they put on her right hand so that she could learn to hold the pencil. Didn't matter about the crying.

Ah, nuns.

You can also see, if you look closely, that her fingernails are wrecked. She used to bite off her nails and cuticles, even as an adult, until they bled. She had, after years and years, wrecked her nail beds that way, so her nails were all lumpy and misshapen. (The only other person I've seen who's done this is, strangely, Elijah Wood. If you watch The Lord of The Ring movies closely, you can see that his nails are also wrecked like that.)

Computer?

Yes, computer. I just bit the bullet and ordered--well, let Dave order for me--a new computer. It's another Mac. Sigh. It was Dave's choice which one to order for me because, left to my own devices, I would have just ordered the cheapest one, even though the case was made of, I guess, cardboard or something, and the CPU was made from parts of old wind-up toys. (Can you tell that I know nothing about computers?)

So my new computer should be here on Thursday.