Even in grade school I was an overachiever, and often looked ahead in the book or had an idea of how to write letters and numbers before our official instruction came along.

But in first grade, in the middle of our intense instruction in the D’Nealian style of block printing, I was told that a number of my characters were formed wrong and needed to be relearned. In particular, I drew the number “5” like an “S” with a kink in it, starting at the top right and drawing it all in one stroke.

My first grade teacher insisted that I needed to write the “5” character the proper D’Nealian way, which starts in the upper left and requires you to draw a hook straight out of Peter Pan before capping it at the top in a separate stroke. It was pounded into me over the course of a year, and I wrote it that way for decades.

Then, as a college student, I came to realize that no one way of forming the character was better than any other. In particular, I recalled the case of the uppercase cursive “I” and uppercase cursive “Q.”

In second grade, I got bored with a lesson and read ahead in the book along with my friend Jen. We knew that we’d have to do a worksheet on the capital cursive “I” because it had already been handed out, so we worked on it while everyone else was occupied. With no directions, we wrote the cursive “I” beginning with the crooked arm that differentiates it from the lowercase “L.” When the lesson started, however, Jen and I were shocked to see that the other kids were taught to do the crossbar of the crooked arm as a separate step. Since the worksheet was already done, we were never caught–and I continue to write my cursive “I” the “incorrect” way to this day.

I was sick on the day, later that year, when the uppercase cursive letter “Q” was taught. So I never did that worksheet and never learned it, with only the rarity of uppercase “Q” in scholastic writing saving me (we’d done lowercase “q” separately). When I finally saw the D’Nealian uppercase cursive “Q,” I was appalled: it was a sickly creature that looked like an emaciated “2.” So starting in third grade, I simply wrote a normal print “Q” in place of that abomination. Nobody noticed.

Fast forward 15 years. In college, my handwriting was often praised for its legibility, having never quite lost the childish look that in most people gives way to cramped scribbles, and I decided that it was time to reclaim my number “5.” Like the “I” and the “Q,” I started writing it my own way, the way I had before first grade. It was as easy as riding a bike after a long absence.

Of course, now my “5” is easy to mistake for an “S” especially when I’m in a hurry. But it was worth it to reclaim that bit of my childhood and thumb my nose at Mr. D’Nealian.

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