In First Grade they sat me at a desk and placed an exercise book with carefully ruled lines before me, and directed a pencil into my right hand. They tried to teach me to write the symbols—a circle with a stroke just touching its right edge was “a”, and so on—but I could not make my circle join up again and I could not get the stroke to touch nor to be the right length and anyway broke the pencil lead almost every time I tried. Mrs Tucker used her long ruler to lash the calves of anyone who needed to use the pencil sharpener at any time other than the beginning of the class.
Then I made a very major discovery. Almost by accident, I found that if used my right hand and started at the right edge of the page and worked across to the left, forming every letter backwards as I went, I could do it. Indeed, Mrs Tucker was very impressed with my work and gave me my one and only elephant stamp.
“There! You see. You can do it if you try, you naughty boy!”
......
“Now do the next exercise and show the whole class that you...”
??????
“Zed, what are you doing!”
!!!!!!
“My God, it’s backwards. You can’t write backwards! It’s evil.”
Her long ruler snapped down upon my knuckles, swatting the wickedness before her horrified eyes. For Mrs Tucker, it was the most dreadful abomination imaginable.