Cursive writing, and a July 12, 1987 letter

When Tito was in his early 20's, his mother was filling out some documents that both she and his father needed to sign before she could mail them off. His father wasn't home and wouldn't be home relatively soon and his mother wanted the paperwork completed. She asked Tito to forge her father's signature by looking at some other documents that he'd signed.

Tito knew his father wouldn't care if his name was forged on the documents, and it wasn't anything important enough to be a legal problem in the future. However, he told his mother that he couldn't do it. She argued with him that it was no big deal, but he repeated that he really couldn't do it, and,  it was true.

This was a story Tito told me early on in our relationship to explain that he couldn't forge a signature because he had never learned to write in cursive. He could barely sign his own name in cursive, let alone try to copy someone else's writing. In this day and age, many people never learn cursive, but it was unheard of for children raised in the 70's to not know how to do it. It was one of those classes that Tito had opted to skip when he was younger.

All of the letters and cards that Tito wrote me were printed because he didn't know how to write in cursive. This was the first letter he ever sent me. He's sent cassette tapes and a note on a postcard, but this was the first letter. I think one of the reasons he always preferred talking  on tapes was that his way of writing by hand was slower than mine—because he never learned to write in cursive.