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Signatures...
14 years ago
General
I realized something kinda odd today, and I'm not really sure how I should feel about it, if I should even put much thought into it anymore at all.
When I was younger, I had this... not really obsession, but I always felt that, once I hit 18 and had to start putting my name to official documents, I had to have a really good signature. After all, in the olden days, your signature was your coat of arms; it was amazingly fancy, and it was something that you put quite a lot of pride into. Even in more modern times, it seems like you gotta have a good, strong signature. It needed to look good and look classy for official documents, and couldn't be something you just scratched out like you were half asleep. Both my parents have pretty good signatures, though I'll admit that the other one is the product of the infamous "doctor font" (you know the one, the one that looks basically like chicken scratch for some strange reason and every doctor seems to do it like that for some inexplicable reason).
So, for a time, I really wanted to have a good, strong signature as well. Something I could slap down on a piece of paper and not look like an idiot or something writing it.
Well... my name isn't really "signature friendly". At all.
Some names kinda feel inherently easy to make a signature with. Be it the letters in the name or the way the words are shaped, some people can have really amazing signatures. Mine, not so much. In practice, it's actually very clumsy to try and write, and the way the letters flow almost feels like you're constantly drawing circles, but in alternating directions. Then you toss in my initials which, all together, are just impossible to make flow right. Not even my dad, who's actually really good at making signatures, could figure out how to do it "right". So with that, I had to submit myself to just writing my name in cursive. It takes longer than it should to write and it's rather stupid looking, but there's nothing else I can do.
Then today, while I was getting coffee, I noticed something: I'm not even really writing my name anymore.
I took a better look at the signature I wrote down and, aside from the first letters of my first and last name, and making the thin loops upwards or downwards for Hs and Ys and Qs and such, the rest was just squiggly lines. Actually, pretty much everything except those first letters are squiggly lines. They're really the only thing you can legitimately read.
So as I stared at it for the brief moment before I remembered I actually had to had that copy of the receipt to the cashier, it boggled my mind how completely blasé I now am about having a signature that looks nice and professional.
When I was younger, I had this... not really obsession, but I always felt that, once I hit 18 and had to start putting my name to official documents, I had to have a really good signature. After all, in the olden days, your signature was your coat of arms; it was amazingly fancy, and it was something that you put quite a lot of pride into. Even in more modern times, it seems like you gotta have a good, strong signature. It needed to look good and look classy for official documents, and couldn't be something you just scratched out like you were half asleep. Both my parents have pretty good signatures, though I'll admit that the other one is the product of the infamous "doctor font" (you know the one, the one that looks basically like chicken scratch for some strange reason and every doctor seems to do it like that for some inexplicable reason).
So, for a time, I really wanted to have a good, strong signature as well. Something I could slap down on a piece of paper and not look like an idiot or something writing it.
Well... my name isn't really "signature friendly". At all.
Some names kinda feel inherently easy to make a signature with. Be it the letters in the name or the way the words are shaped, some people can have really amazing signatures. Mine, not so much. In practice, it's actually very clumsy to try and write, and the way the letters flow almost feels like you're constantly drawing circles, but in alternating directions. Then you toss in my initials which, all together, are just impossible to make flow right. Not even my dad, who's actually really good at making signatures, could figure out how to do it "right". So with that, I had to submit myself to just writing my name in cursive. It takes longer than it should to write and it's rather stupid looking, but there's nothing else I can do.
Then today, while I was getting coffee, I noticed something: I'm not even really writing my name anymore.
I took a better look at the signature I wrote down and, aside from the first letters of my first and last name, and making the thin loops upwards or downwards for Hs and Ys and Qs and such, the rest was just squiggly lines. Actually, pretty much everything except those first letters are squiggly lines. They're really the only thing you can legitimately read.
So as I stared at it for the brief moment before I remembered I actually had to had that copy of the receipt to the cashier, it boggled my mind how completely blasé I now am about having a signature that looks nice and professional.
