his broom against his ceiling. The old man usually delivers this complaint when I’m jumping rope indoors, and for once I am grateful for his intervention. My parents fall silent.
I hear the door to my mother’s bedroom slam shut. I am still sitting at the foot of my bed, gripping the bedpost, waiting to know what has changed and what will stay the same. Through the wall I hear the sound of soft, stifled weeping.
By the time I get up and pad quietly to my mother’s door, the weeping has stopped. I know how to comfort her, how to crawl into her bed and hang my leg over her hip the way we used to sleep when it was just the two of us. I slip into her unlit room, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out a hunched shape—my father. Alone, he is sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to me. When he wipes the corner of each eye with the heel of his hand, he seems no older than I am, and I will remember this gesture for years. I linger in the still pool of his sorrow. Quietly as I can, I slip back into the hall and close the door.
The Scriptological Review:
A Last Letter from the Editor
• • •
This is not a guide to good handwriting. You’ll find no dos and don’ts, no dotted lines here. If that’s what you’re looking for, try
Cursive First
, a workbook force-fed to me at the age of eight, when the nuns tried to mold my hand around the rubber pencil grip of conformity.
What you’re reading is the final copy of
The Scriptological Review
, a journal dedicated to the social analysis of handwriting. Our inaugural issue appeared two years ago, with a cover story titled “Slanty Signatures and Secret Turmoil: The Correlation Between High Cursive Slant and Low Self-Esteem.” In this, we analyzed a letter from John Wilkes Booth, whose cursive was brambled with signals that the lay reader would likely ignore, such as intraletter gaps and distended
a
’s and
o
’s.
If you’re still reading, then it’s likely that you are a subscriber and a scriptophile, but for the remaining fraction who have happened upon this issue on a bus seat or in a dentist’soffice (or propping open a window, as I found my mother’s copy of Volume IV), let me introduce myself.
My name is Vijay Pachikara, and I am presently the editor of
The Scriptological Review
. My mom is listed on the masthead as “publisher-at-large,” but all she provides is the funding and the office space. I set up shop in her basement a year ago, and the commute from my bedroom couldn’t be better.
As long as my mom handles the funding, I don’t mind if she wants to while away her time with her boyfriend, Kirk Bäumler. Kirk is reliable and handy, like a good garden tool, a man of patience and resolve who once felled a cedar tree on his property and fashioned it into a dugout canoe. There may be much to admire about men like Kirk, but his handwriting tells another story.
Exhibit A:
Inscription from Birthday Card to Vijay from Kirk
Consider the narrowness of the e-loops, so sharp that they verge on lowercase
i
’s, a recurring sign of neediness. Also note the castrated
y
.
I tried to persuade my mom to note as much while she was packing for their overnight trip to Nashville, but she was too busy fitting her belongings into her suitcase, as pleased as if she were assembling the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Kirk had urged her to come away with him to the Bahamas, but she refused to leave town for more than a night. I told Kirkthat this was for the best, since I’d need her to make a few purchases from the photocopy store, where my credit card had been repeatedly declined. Kirk bit his lower lip, as he often does when I mention the
Review
.
Kirk has been sore ever since I wedged copies of the
Review
under the fenders of his employees’ cars two weeks ago. Apparently, the boardroom drones of Steak Shack Inc. have no sense of imagination or innovation, save the daughter of one guy, who called the number on the back of the magazine and asked if
I hear the door to my mother’s bedroom slam shut. I am still sitting at the foot of my bed, gripping the bedpost, waiting to know what has changed and what will stay the same. Through the wall I hear the sound of soft, stifled weeping.
By the time I get up and pad quietly to my mother’s door, the weeping has stopped. I know how to comfort her, how to crawl into her bed and hang my leg over her hip the way we used to sleep when it was just the two of us. I slip into her unlit room, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I make out a hunched shape—my father. Alone, he is sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to me. When he wipes the corner of each eye with the heel of his hand, he seems no older than I am, and I will remember this gesture for years. I linger in the still pool of his sorrow. Quietly as I can, I slip back into the hall and close the door.
The Scriptological Review:
A Last Letter from the Editor
• • •
This is not a guide to good handwriting. You’ll find no dos and don’ts, no dotted lines here. If that’s what you’re looking for, try
Cursive First
, a workbook force-fed to me at the age of eight, when the nuns tried to mold my hand around the rubber pencil grip of conformity.
What you’re reading is the final copy of
The Scriptological Review
, a journal dedicated to the social analysis of handwriting. Our inaugural issue appeared two years ago, with a cover story titled “Slanty Signatures and Secret Turmoil: The Correlation Between High Cursive Slant and Low Self-Esteem.” In this, we analyzed a letter from John Wilkes Booth, whose cursive was brambled with signals that the lay reader would likely ignore, such as intraletter gaps and distended
a
’s and
o
’s.
If you’re still reading, then it’s likely that you are a subscriber and a scriptophile, but for the remaining fraction who have happened upon this issue on a bus seat or in a dentist’soffice (or propping open a window, as I found my mother’s copy of Volume IV), let me introduce myself.
My name is Vijay Pachikara, and I am presently the editor of
The Scriptological Review
. My mom is listed on the masthead as “publisher-at-large,” but all she provides is the funding and the office space. I set up shop in her basement a year ago, and the commute from my bedroom couldn’t be better.
As long as my mom handles the funding, I don’t mind if she wants to while away her time with her boyfriend, Kirk Bäumler. Kirk is reliable and handy, like a good garden tool, a man of patience and resolve who once felled a cedar tree on his property and fashioned it into a dugout canoe. There may be much to admire about men like Kirk, but his handwriting tells another story.
Exhibit A:
Inscription from Birthday Card to Vijay from Kirk
Consider the narrowness of the e-loops, so sharp that they verge on lowercase
i
’s, a recurring sign of neediness. Also note the castrated
y
.
I tried to persuade my mom to note as much while she was packing for their overnight trip to Nashville, but she was too busy fitting her belongings into her suitcase, as pleased as if she were assembling the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Kirk had urged her to come away with him to the Bahamas, but she refused to leave town for more than a night. I told Kirkthat this was for the best, since I’d need her to make a few purchases from the photocopy store, where my credit card had been repeatedly declined. Kirk bit his lower lip, as he often does when I mention the
Review
.
Kirk has been sore ever since I wedged copies of the
Review
under the fenders of his employees’ cars two weeks ago. Apparently, the boardroom drones of Steak Shack Inc. have no sense of imagination or innovation, save the daughter of one guy, who called the number on the back of the magazine and asked if
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