Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Background Check - I was a nerdy little girl

Yesterday my blogger friend The Vegetable Assassin posted about how one of her blogger friends had hand written a post then the Veg hand wrote a post. It was intriguing to me because handwriting is very personal and you can tell a lot about an individual by her or his handwriting style.

Actually I can tell a lot about a person by looking at handwriting because the summer I turned 10 I was (a big doofus? still playing with Barbies? dreaming I'd grow up to look like Olivia Newton John only with bigger boobs?) obsessed with graphology - otherwise known as handwriting analysis.

At the time I fancied myself quite the little amateur hand writing expert. The Nancy Drew (with bigger boobs) of graphology if you will. I read everything I could possibly find about handwriting analysis at our local public library and even asked for and received a graphology book for my birthday.

Then I bugged all my friends and everyone in my family for handwriting samples and proceeded to analyze them and give them each individual and detailed personality assessments based on my vast expert knowledge. I'm sure it wasn't annoying at all.

My little sideline kept me out of trouble and I think my friends and family should just have thanked their lucky stars that I wasn't into phrenology or black tar heroin.

The graphology book I once treasured is long since gone, and I have come to realize that many real experts think that handwriting analysis is a bunch of hooey, but here are some generalizations of the craft that I vaguely remember and if anybody out there thinks the items in the bullet points below are incorrect, I was too lazy to verify most of this stuff, so you are probably right. It's all from memory and I smoked a lot of pot and ate a few toadstools in the late 80's:

  • Large writing = obnoxious bastard

  • Small writing = a shut in


  • Writing tends to slant downward = the person is generally a bummer


  • Writing tends to slant upward = Pollyanna


  • Legible writing = nun


  • Illegible writing = whackjob


  • Writing that is extremely neat and tidy = serial killer

  • Words spaced far apart = jackass - the person thinks what they have to say is very important
All I've got of recent handwriting samples of my own are shopping and to-do lists and those are in print not script. I'm not sure I even remember how to write in script. It looks weird when I try.
Here's what I think you can tell about me from my handwriting samples above (all but the post it note, which was wadded up into a little ball and hiding on the floor behind the waste can in our office, were found folded up in the pockets of my various jackets):


  • I have a cat
  • My lower case R's look like V's

  • I cook a lot

  • I eat fairly healthy

  • I like Mexican food

  • Sometimes I buy cake

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what...you're saying I'm an obnoxious bastard, do-gooder whack job?

...that's actually impressive! :)

What it actually says is "I was weaned on tequila".

The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch: said...

Veg - Hey Babe, I didn't invent graphology - I just comb meaning from it. Actually, even though the science of it is questionable I usually find it to be fairly accurate. But then again the same could be said of horoscopes.

Churlita said...

that's too funny. right now, what you can tell about me from the writing on my lists, is that I have to pay my bills, and I sometimes wear a wig on Halloween that needs to be returned to its rightful owner. Wow. That's pretty neat!

SkylersDad said...

I have actually lost the ability to write in cursive sine my job has demanded I type all the time and print in log books for most of my life.

Can you give me a printing analysis? I will send you a sample on a page out of my Big Chief tablet.

My take away from your list is what time do I stop by for pork chops?

The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch: said...

Churlita - it's uncanny what you can pick up about people isn't it?

Skydad - Dude, I'm sorry but you missed the pork chops - it was last month (so now you know how long it's been since I swept the floor in the office) and they were fabulous. I made schnitzel with them (AKA chicken fried steak) and served with potato and cheese pierogies. Next time.

Gwen said...

As a kid I considered myself a Junior Encyclopedia Brown so what I get out of your handwriting is that you eat a lot of romaine, which explains the need for all that toilet paper.

WendyB said...

Analyze this: I hold my pen/pencil incorrectly. Maybe I need to take a picture of that sometime, if I can fight the shame off.

Tara said...

Even if you're a serial killer, I really admire your handwriting. I might be a cross between a nun and a whacko.

Anonymous said...

Who writes in cursive except for third graders? I don't know why schools bother teaching kids cursive these days, except to keep graphologists employed. Damned graphologist lobby.

The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch: said...

Gwen - you should be jealous of my very healthy colon - My BM's are a thing of beauty. Also even before I discovered the glory of a high fiber diet I was famous for never running out of toilet paper.

WendyB - Interesting - With actually seeing what you mean by improper utensil holding I'm inclined to want to look at the pressure applied - like too light would mean you are non committal and breezy and too heavy is akin to grinding your teeth in your sleep - means you swallow your stress but it comes when you torture your pen and paper.

Tara - you are exactly right - I'm all prissy and like things done properly but I'm a nutball at heart.

Kirby - I haven't seen anything handwritten that wasn't printed since elementary school. I think it's a lost art, but I'm not sure I care enough to take up the cause to save it. Who gives a shit - if your kid learns to type they'll be allright.

background check said...

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