The Once in a Lifetime Compliment

Today I was sitting in Washington Square Park on a park bench, holding my Moleskine notebook in my lap and writing a diary entry.  The notebook isn't a hardbound one, so I was struggling to write in it.  After I'd filled about a quarter of a page I was interrupted.

Two well-dressed, elderly ladies walked by and said to me that they couldn't read what I'd written, but that my handwriting looked very nice.

I tried to tell them that my handwriting isn't really very good, and never has been, but they cut off my protest with, "it's very neat and orderly."  I decided not to argue and said, "thank you."

I mean, my handwriting is awful.  Calling it "chicken scratch" is likely to get chickens up in arms (wings?) over the insult...  It's never been good.  In elementary school I had to take special handwriting classes with a special pencil because my writing was simply that bad.

The only time it was ever not terribly awful was the few years I used a fountain pen for my diary entries.  It actually had improved a little during that time, but then all my pens started leaking and I quit using them.

So, it was very odd for complete strangers passing by to tell me my handwriting is nice, neat and orderly...

This is what I was writing in my notebook when the ladies saw me...  They would've seen
it upside down, from the walkway...

This is something I wrote a few weeks ago, in my previous notebook, with a
more rigid plastic cover, writing at a table on the High Line.