Mirror writing, for fun and games

My son is 17 and I just learned that he takes his class notes by mirror writing. I was talking to him last night and just noticed a strange looking piece of notebook paper and asked him what it was. He said turn it around and hold it up to the light.

Turned out it was history notes.

I asked him how long it took him to do that parlor trick (it was a full page) and he laughed and said same time it takes me to write it "regular."

He then showed me dozens of pages of notes he took that way. He said it helps him focus on the information and helps him learn it better.

I was fascinated by this discovery and surprised I never knew he did that before. Must be a pain in the rear to classmates who want to borrow his notes. Maybe there's an app for that.

So since I was intrigued by the phenomenon, I did some y research into it and found that it can occur via brain damage (fortunately not the case here), or about 1 in 6,500 people can do it naturally.

Leonardo da Vinci mirror wrote his notes. Several theories were given for it:

- he was left-handed and writing right to left kept ink from smudging

- he wanted to keep the Roman Catholic Church from reading his notes

- it was a big thumb to the nose to traditional language. How dare it be so inflexible that you couldn't choose direction or orientation of characters

- it was a method of reinforcing what he wrote

I like to think it was either # 3 or 4, but nobody seemed to know. At least, the reason likely died with da Vinci.

Just thought it was interesting.