I am blazing through the produce aisle, shopping for a dinner party just hours away, when I realize I can’t read my own writing.

It’s not just a matter of one messy word. There are two, maybe three items that are completely illegible. My grocery list looks like a prescription for penicillin!

“Elenone?” I say to myself. “What the heck is elenone? Is it an essential ingredient in my chicken pesto pasta?”

I start to panic.

“Elenone, elenone : or is it elamine : elamino? Like elamino acid, maybe?”

“OK, just relax,” commands my inner voice. “It’ll come. Move on to the next item and go back to it.”

But the next word is even more difficult to read, like scratches from a chicken suffering from delirium tremens. I can’t make heads or tails of it either.

“Naguli? Majula?” I mutter to myself. “I still have a can of marjoram from 1985. It can’t be that!”

I thump my head, curse my stupidity for attempting to make a shopping list before my morning coffee and bemoan the steady decline of my penmanship.

My handwriting was never what anyone would call attractive. Not like the nuns who beautifully illustrated the Palmer Method of penmanship on the blackboard with rhythmic, sweeping motions. I could never duplicate their uniform examples of cursive writing, even after scribbling 100 identical capital F’s on a piece of double-ruled paper. (Now THERE was a stimulating exercise!)

Later in school, when the rules for writing relaxed, I experimented with different, often schizophrenic styles, never really settling on one signature script.

Finally, at the age of – oh, I don’t know – 38, I arrived at a writing style that was relatively consistent and legible 80 percent of the time.

Then I got a computer, and all bets were off.

Over the years, as I spent more and more time at the keyboard, my typing speed increased exponentially while my handwriting disintegrated into indecipherable chaos. Then, e-mail was introduced and old-fashioned longhand went the way of the rotary phone.

Phone messages I took had to be deciphered like secret government codes.

On the dreaded occasion when I’d have to pen a thank-you note, it would look something like this:

Deor Mrsle,

Tlunk yuu sa moch far tle lowley geft.

My decrepit signature on receipts raised eyebrows from scrupulous clerks who eyeballed the back of my credit card with suspicion. “This doesn’t look like your signature,” they’d say. “I know,” I’d reply. “My hand cramps. Carpal tunnel, a very serious case.”

Soon, I began typing personal letters so the recipients wouldn’t find my sentiments completely illegible or, heaven forbid, insulting.

It caused me so much anxiety that, one night, I had a dream. I was on a pleasure cruise, a three-hour tour with a professor, a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a farm girl from Kansas, the skipper and his goofy little mate. All of a sudden, the boat capsized, drowning everyone but me. I washed up on an uncharted desert isle with a year’s worth of lounging pajamas (Thanks, Mrs. Howell!). My only chance for rescue was to send a note in an empty Captain Morgan bottle (Thanks, Mr. Howell!) out to sea. I scratched out a message as best I could, with precise instructions on how to find me – latitude, longitude, winds and current (the Professor briefed me before going down for the last time). I corked the paper in the bottle and pitched it into the surf. Soon, my note floated into the fishing net of a handsome and wealthy yachtsman who, try though he might, couldn’t make out a single word of my S.O.S.

“Poor sotted soul,” said the man. “Should have drunk the rum AFTER writing the note.” He chucked the bottle overboard.

Back in the produce department, I shake off the nightmare and glance again at my list. “It’s not elenone!” I cry. “It’s edamame! Edamame, for the salad!!” I skip happily off to the frozen foods, but my celebration is cut short when I realize I still don’t know what “Naguli” might be.

As I place my items on the checkout scanner (minus the mysterious ingredient), I think maybe it’s time to start typing my grocery lists. AND my thank-you notes. AND phone messages.

And if I ever get invited to cruise on a boat called The Minnow, you can bet I’ll have my laptop and printer in my suitcase.