Column: Elon, is TikTok next?

Dear readers,

Once upon a time in every elementary school classroom the alphabet written in cursive was displayed above the blackboard.

Penmanship was one of the required subjects taught to every child. Students with beautiful penmanship had their papers publicly displayed on the bulletin board. Students with very poor penmanship went on to become doctors. 

Cursive writing continued to be taught in schools even after the advent of the computer. Knowing how to communicate with only a Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil and a piece of paper was believed to be important as a backup plan if computers crashed and the internet went down. A scenario that might seem a little farfetched now, but in the final days of the 20th century the entire country was living in fear.

The internet in those days was just a souped-up version of an old first-generation department of defense computer called ARPANET made in the late 1960s. Tennessee Senator Al Gore promoted the legislation that turned it into the internet. Using only bailing wire, twine, duct tape, and several hundred old TV tubes, the old machine came to life like a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster.

Scientists weren’t sure the machine could withstand the cosmic forces as earth passed out of the 20th into the 21st century. Doomsday approached.  The government advised all citizens to stockpile not only Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils, but also food and all other essentials. 

Huddled in our basements, the moment in history known as Y2K arrived. We closed our eyes and held our breath. The earth smoothly drifted into the new century. Electricity remained on. Computers were still computing. 

The biggest problem we faced as the new millennium dawned was what to do with all of that stockpiled Spam and pencils.

The Spam was mostly gotten rid of by hiding it in casseroles taken to church pitch-ins. The pencils were a bigger problem. By 2012, the duct tape and old TV tubes in the internet had been replaced by new parts from China.

With the Y2K fears long forgotten and everyone now typing, elementary schools stopped teaching cursive writing. No one was sending notes written on little pieces of paper anymore. Well, almost no one.

In 2012, State Senator Jean Leising sponsored legislation requiring public schools to teach cursive writing. Senator Leising stated, “I still have a pad of yellow Sticky Notes, and if I write out something neatly in cursive, I expect an intern at the Senate to be able to read it.”

Senator Leising’s bill failed to pass not only in 2012 but every year since, until this year. This year was different, but so was her bill.  Instead of requiring the teaching of cursive, her bill will just require schools to report if cursive writing is being taught. 

If it turns out that no schools are still teaching cursive writing, it is OK by me. I think it should be against the law to teach a child cursive writing. 

Why, might you ask? Well, because youngsters of today with their fancy tweets, blogs, and TikTok, already have the upper hand. Cursive is all old-timers have. It’s nice to be able to write a note to another old-timer using our secret code of cursive. 

Even if teenagers of today could read cursive, they would just ignore your little note to mow the lawn. There is no time to mow the lawn.  Teenagers are much too busy eating tablespoons full of cinnamon, putting tabasco drops in their eyes, or doing whatever ridiculous TikTok challenge their Chinese overlords have commanded. 

The way I figure it, the only hope left for today’s youth is if Elon Musk can make enough money to buy TikTok from the Chinese. My suggestion for the first TikTok challenge when Elon is at the helm: “Make your bed and then mow the lawn.”

 See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.

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