A hundred moments in autism - Terrence Oblong’s Messy handwriting

It was the start of the new school year. I was excited. I was now really old, I was eight, which was nearly double figures.  

However, as I joined my class the teacher pulled me to one side. I wasn’t to join my class, she said.  

“Why not?” I said.  

“You’re writing isn’t up to standard,” she said. “It’s too messy.”  

My writing was messy.  At home I wrote with a biro, and my writing wasn’t too bad. But at school we used fountain pens, and seemingly all I did was smother the page in ink, with a serious mess finding its way onto my hands and fingers as well.   

Later, my teacher helped me work on my handwriting, running special sessions for me and another student in his own time.  When I say later, I mean five years later, at my high school. Back in primary school, I get no support at all. I have to sit through the same lessons I’d already sat through a year before, only this time with a bunch of strangers.  

I have no memories of this year. No memories at all. Either nothing happened, nothing at all, or things so bad I repressed them.  

Eventually, my teacher took me to one side again.  

“We’re moving you back up to your original class,” she said.  

“So, my handwriting’s improved?” I said.   

“No!” she grimaced. “We’re just not allowed to hold you back any longer.”  

So, I rejoined my class, which meant that I missed an entire year of schooling. The good news, I would never need to use a fountain pen again. The higher age groups used biros.  

I had been held back from the group which didn’t use fountain pens because of my inability to write with a fountain pen.  

Handwriting difficulties are common in autists, perhaps linked to poor motor skills and visual-motor integration which makes it hard for some autists to translate thoughts into physical action. One study, published in the Neuroscience Journal in 2022, found that children with autism perform poorer on all measures of handwriting quality compared to a non-austist control group. The autists had difficulties with connecting letters, wrote less fluently, and had irregularities in height and spacial alignment. If they'd used a fountain pen doubless they'd have made a bloody great mess as well. 

I remained a bright student, but having missed a year at such a young age I had massive gaps in my knowledge. Many years’ later there would be weird gaps in my knowledge because I’d simply missed so much schooling.   

I didn’t like my high school tutor, he was an art teacher and I hated art, I paint with words, always have, always will.  But I appreciate the time he made for me to help me with my writing.