Yes, we are alike in many ways. I still remember the Catholic nun from the 1st grade smacking my hands with a wooden ruler for my poor handwriting skills. It never improved. It did however turn my rebel self against the church making it so painful an experience for my mother to get me up, get me ready, and constantly dragging to make her late that she eventually gave up and I changed schools for the 2nd grade and we stopped going to church. I remember again in whatever grade that was when we started learning cursive. Similar experience, but no smacking, just forced repetition over and over and over. Of course in the same bad form. I suppose the teachers at that time were not informed that repetition of doing something in bad form just reinforces the muscle memory. lol. To this day I still scribble my name "like a doctor" some folks say. Anything else, I print. My printing isn't pretty, but it's fairly legible. If only we had computers back in my days of school.
It's funny how we've had similar experiences.
I can write reasonably well these days, not great, but I don't credit those beatings for it; I'm self-taught...in many aspects of life. I don't look back on those beatings, or any other, with anger though...I learned many things, just not what those doing the beating wished me to learn. The post says it all.