Being left-handed I was never able to master the cursive, nor hand in a pencil written paper that wasn't smudged. I still have ball-point ink from those original ball-point pen inks that never dried on my left hand from dragging across the paper. Naturally I am disappointed at the loss of cursive skills in the general populace. Not.
My husband would agree with you, since he's a leftie with that problem. Our cards to friends generally read, "Happy birthday, from Linda and Smudge". :)
Leftie here too. I was blessed, though, to become a special project of my elementary school principal who, believe it or not, minored in penmanship. He took me on and taught me penmanship as I went to his office every afternoon to spent time writing the cursive alphabet over and over. I was the only good kid who was constantly in the principal's office ;o). Anyway, when I was in junior high, I won first place in the school penmanship contest. The prize was a neato transistor radio, as I recall. I had excellent penmanship in school and was the one to go to for copies of class notes. That is, until I took the bar exam review course: two months of three-hour lectures five days a week after a full day of work. My handwriting never truly recovered although I can still do it if I concentrate.
I, too, occasionally smudged (and I hated the spiral notebooks). What's interesting is that I learned to write backwards cursive as fast as my forward and, in fact, faster and easier because I didn't have to drag my fist behind me: a leftie writing backwards is like a rightie writing forward. (Still hate those spiral notebooks though. Now the only spirals I buy are top-bound.)