The pen is flightier than the sword

By the time I'd gotten to third grade, my penmanship had improved from Utterly Godawful to Below Average, and it continued to get better for the next few years; by the time I was given a Social Security number — yes, children, there was a time when they didn't make you get one the day you were born — I was able to sign the little card in clear, flowing, legible strokes.

Then I got one of these:

Actually, the machine I had bore the Singer (as in "sewing machine") name, but it was obviously a rebadged Royal Safari; just the same, my penmanship has pretty much stunk ever since.

And apparently I'm not alone:

Merchants have looked askance at my signature before; I assure them, "If you can actually read it, it's a forgery." The numbers were the last to go: until a couple of years ago, I could still do reasonably-readable digits, but even those are getting a bit difficult.

(My second typewriter was one of these; my third is one of those soulless electronic models. Still, it gets used on a regular basis, for things that are just too short to justify firing up the word processor.)