I'm going to dedicate my 40,000th post to my mother.
Last edited Sun Oct 5, 2025, 01:10 PM - Edit history (1)
She always wanted one of her children to be a writer. With me she got an autistic spectrum klutz -- clumsy in motion, clumsy with words.
I learned to read early, largely because my mother read to me. I remember knowing how to read before I knew how to speak. From kindergarten to the third grade, when the other kids were learning to read, I was sent out to work with the school speech therapists.
My handwriting has always been a mess. It hasn't changed much since I was in the second grade. My mom insisted I take typing as my seventh grade elective. This was awkward because there was only one other boy in the class of thirty. Typing is a skill that has served me well. I can type as fast as I think. I cannot write by hand as fast as I think. Talking as fast as I think has always gotten me into lots of trouble. Many of my thoughts are best not spoken. I have a knife scar on my arm that reminds me of that. A violent person didn't like what I was saying.
In college I decided to minor in English hoping it would improve my writing skills. I was a great frustration to all my English teachers but my writing did improve.
My mom's writing skills got her work as a script secretary, as an advertising copy writer, as an editor, and as a ghost writer. I've never sold any of my writing.
I've been reading DU from the beginning and signed on as hunter in February 2002. Since then I've been posting 4 or 5 times daily.
It's been a wild ride.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I can relate to what you were talking about. My older brother was two years ahead of me in school and taught me how to read long before I started first grade. My handwriting has always been illegible, but I never really learned to type either. Voice to text is what I’m using now. I wish we’d have had it a long time ago. It’s nice to meet you and thanks for your post dedicated to your mother. 
40,000 posts since 2022? That is quite prolific! 
2002 or 2022 - just give or take 20 years! 
Happy dancin' for ya!
to read so early.
Sympathies on messy handwriting. I started writing lefthanded, while being taught by a woman who insisted that all her students write righthanded. I did, but I still hold pens and pencils improperly and get writer's cramp really quickly. Keyboards are a blessing. Good for your mom for insisting you take a typing class.
You're still a writer. It's nice to get paid for writing, but whatever you write is still writing, and your intellectual property (something the AI bros stealing the world's intellectual property like to pretend isn't true, but those robber barons are wrong).
And you communicate very well. Glad you're here.
Whether we each agree or not, we all stand for, and with, the principles that form our Union. You have been a great help and support for those here who are also trying to form a more perfect version. Your knowledge and experiences are always appreciated.
Bless the ghostwriter. They create the magic that makes the subject look even better. Not an easy job in some cases.
She must have been amazing. 
