It’s Friday morning again, the day I normally start sketching out my column for the following week. But I’ve got a problem. My computer is at the computer doctor. So, if I decide to write, I’ll have to do it longhand, in cursive, with a pen on paper like back in the 12th century, way before keyboards and movable type.

I hardly ever write in cursive anymore, just my signature at the bottom of official forms and shopping lists magnetically pinned to the refrigerator door. Maybe a holiday greeting to a favorite aunt.

I learned cursive from the Dominicans in grade school. Each letter had its own unique shape and sound… an esss, a beee, like single notes in a musical composition, meaningless on their own, but a chanted Latin mass when merged as one, echoing within the walls of the great stone cathedral.

In college, on sheets of white paper with a sharpened black pencil, I tried to osmotically absorb Bellow’s style by copying his printed words and paragraphs and emerging ideas one cursive stroke at a time.

I think differently in cursive, like taking a slow walk in the city park behind the house where we live, aware that blades of grass grow out of cracks in the concrete path while cyclists and joggers pass me by.

On a keyboard attached to a computer, I can just take off. In cursive, I have to pause at the beginning of every word, every letter. How to shape the capital Y? How to spell asperigus?

Writing in cursive is like pouring concrete. You have to get it right the first time because you can’t go back to correct mistakes without making a mess on the page — crossed out words and lines and scribbled notes pointing to an empty space where to place an afterthought darting about in my mind like a bird looking for a safe spot to land.

I started sketching out this week’s column in cursive on sheets of white paper with a sharpened black pencil one letter at a time.

I tried, but I couldn’t keep up with my racing thoughts.

It was Friday, December 6, an uncelebrated national event.

From gramps and dad I learned the story of another December 6, many years ago… 83 years ago to be exact.

On Dec. 6, 1941, Americans thought they were at peace. After a decade-long Depression, the factories were hiring again, making bombs for others on the other side of vast, protective oceans — on the other side of the world.

December 6.

A day that should be remembered just like the stories gramps and dad told.

A day with a shape and a restful sound, like a peaceful esss concluding a difficult sentence, written in cursive in a language unspoken by all those then living on the other side of the world.

I don’t know how to write the following day in cursive. Waiting for my computer doctor to give me a call.