My Coffee, Gregg Shorthand, My Wicked Imagination

Coffee has gotten me through some difficult situations. So has Gregg shorthand. Oh yes, those shorthand instructors in high school and college would be proud of me. After yea, these many years, I still remember. And, boy! Does it come in handy. 

When I’m in a situation where I’m uncomfortable or bored or a bit ticked off, and I can’t say anything, for propriety’s sake and also the sake of my well-being; when I disagree and would burst if I didn’t express myself, I reach for my pen and paper ( without which a writer never is) and let free expression take flight. Only thing is, I wouldn’t want anybody to peek over my shoulder and see my innermost thoughts, so I resort to shorthand.

I was in just that situation a few days ago. And, shorthand came in handy. I made a scan of it this morning to use on this post and then, I got to thinking…true, I just scribbled it and true, I have to squint to make sense of it this morning, but what if some astute reader out there were to decipher it? It might prove embarrassing. So, even after I scanned it, I decided not to use it on this post. Instead, I wrote another message and am including it. Can anybody read it? Eva, I’ll bet you can!  It’s just one simple sentence which is pretty obvious, not my innermost thoughts or anything of the sort. 

Coffee is also handy. If a conversation or a situation starts going awry, kind of wanders off into an area where I don’t want to go, I take a sip of coffee. Nobody can talk with coffee in their mouths. And, if that isn’t enough, getting choked on a mouthful is sure to elicit sympathy and concern and the question or topic is hopefully forgotten.

I’ve always wanted to work shorthand into a cozy mystery I’ve written. I haven’t finished Moonstruck and Murderous. And, Ned is stuck in a difficult situation, but that isn’t unusual for Ned. In fact, that’s what she does–get stuck, I mean–in difficult situations. She is sure to have coffee on hand and I believe, way back in Moonlight Can Be Murder, she did get choked on coffee. But, it wasn’t a put-up job, it was for real and Jackie knocked over a chair in her haste to be of help. But, I digress.

We all have little things we do when the going gets rough, when we want to say something but for propriety’s sake, we can’t, when it seems we will burst if we don’t. That, my friends, is an excellent time to reach for an out-moded skill called shorthand or to grab a large swallow of the caffeinated cure-all. And, what do you do in such situations?