At 5, teary-eyed, I announced to my mother that I never wanted to grow up, because adults' handwriting was ugly. When she asked what I meant, I pointed to her signature — a towering and illegible ...
Like many people over the age of 40, I still have a callused knobby excrescence on the third finger of my right hand, the place where pencils and ballpoints and fountain pens have been resting ever ...