I remember learning to write with a pencil

Later spending hours drawing individual letters over and over with a fountain pen

My handwriting was never very pretty

The words flowed out if my mind clearly but often stumbled as my pen scratched the paper

My teachers scolded me for my poor writing

More interested in the appearance than the substance

I started to despise being judged by my handwriting

I wrote the absolute minimum at school to avoid more criticism

My academic achievements were hampered by my poor handwriting

I discovered a talent for mathematics and excelled

Numbers and equations were easier to write than words

I studied physics and eventually became an engineer

Then came the magic of computer keyboards

Two fingers hunting for letters

But the typed words were always perfect

No more scratchy scribble

I practically abandoned writing anything by hand

My communication bypassed the handwriting police

Technology almost totally freed me from old fashioned writing

Venmo and Zelle replacing the art of writing checks

Texting made post it notes redundant

I dictate my shopping list into my phone

I sign most documents electronically

I discovered the joys of writing poetry in retirement

Transferring my imagination onto the screen with finger taps

Many decades had passed without any intervention from the handwriting police

But something is missing in all this advancement

Emojis in a text cannot compete with the romance of a hand written note with inked kisses

I decided to go back to old school handwriting

I wrote a packing list for a recent vacation

The words were lost in my erratic pen movements between letters

I could hardly read it myself

There had to be a way to improve my handwriting

My iPad came with a stylus pen that I had never used

I discovered it can convert handwritten text on the screen into typed words

Eureka! Now I could go back to old fashioned hand writing while the words magically appeared on the screen alongside the stylus pen

My first attempts were pathetic failures

The computer had infinite patience and guessed most of my words wrong

I tried to write more slowly and carefully

Perfect typed words started to flow behind the stylus pen

I assumed the computer was progressively learning to read my bad handwriting with more precision

However, when I wrote faster the computer got very agitated

Inserting random @symbols # and —dashes $ between & every { other * word

Suddenly I had a very creepy thought

Maybe my iPad was linked to the spirits of my long departed teachers

The handwriting police were somehow still operating deep inside the coding of my iPad software

They were out to get me and shame me publicly

I understood their disguised message and put away the stylus pen

The keyboard welcomed me back like a long lost friend

My thumbs hurt again from the RSI stabbing on my phone

My computer keyboard has fresh crumbs from the daily snacks at my desk

I put extra hearts and kissing emojis in my text messages

The immortal handwriting police will never arrest me again