Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Da "Sig"
Ah, how age wears down life's little pleasures. When I opened up my first checking account in college, I recall going through a stack of signature cards before finally settling on a version of my signature that was both the essence and the flying-high flag of my identity. Writing my 2-3 monthly checks, I carefully scrolled out my penned identity. Usually each mailed check meant about 10 checks were discarded so that one exquisite one could make it to the mailbox. I imagined the receiver of my check spending days admiring the curves, the curlicules, the swish of the trailing end of my signature. Why, my check was probably not cashed promptly because it was hung up by someone's desk, being mooned over as to it's beauty. To me a CND$10.43 cheque (yes, my virgin checking account was drawn from the Royal Bank of Canada. Well, actually Banque Royale du Canada) was equivalent to any check Carnegie or Mellon signed off on when they purchased their steel mills, railroads, or senators. Why would I bother with USA banks with common names like First National Bank or Perth Amboy Savings and Loan?As I got older, the number of checks that were trashed before being mailed or handed over came closer and closer to a 1:1 ratio. Nowadays, what checks I do sign for personal or business related monetary exchanges are handed over with some perceptible squiggle in the signature area. I trace this atrocious penmanship back to my first credit card. Upon receiving it, I flipped it over to attach my signature. Oh, no! I only got one shot at this permanent record. And the strip of plastic to put my mark? Microscopic in height! I had to do a 45 degree slant on my name, as if a gale force wind was blowing my identity toward the windward side of the card. Of course, the pen I was using was the never-drying ink kind, so the extreme right-leaning signature was, in addition, smoodged to a cloud of semi-distince letters.
No matter, it seemed. Any charge card slip I signed was acceptable. Smoodge stood in for my identity. My check signing skills diminished as well. My inked identity seemed of no importance to the cashing receivers of my promissary notes. Even checks I'd forgotten to sign were accepted. The money in my checking account seemed unharnessed and ready to bolt with the passing of any paper from my hands.
I've started, recently, to make an effort with my sloppy penmanship. To my surprise, clarity of letters is now prompting more inquiries than my rushed signing attempts. In this age of electronic money transfers, it seems the written name is attracting the curiousity I used to extend to folks without running water. I'm waiting for the local museum to come calling, inquiring about this penmanship thing.
Here's a hilarious little experiment on testing the expanding borders of signature comparison. My favorite is this one (the matrix series).
Comments:
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At Wegman's, here in Rochester, NY, where you also are wise to dress in your most studiously casual clothes before shopping, since you will be encountering others in the aisles--but I digress--the screen upon which you sign after making an electronic purchase at the checkout-- though I falter in being able to describe this world--, this screen flashes after you are done: Signature Accepted! (complete with exclamation point!). How's that for audacity? I have had this same thought as you cover so well, that I was making a fool of myself by spending any effort trying to make a resemblance of my own, also long lost, signature, and I have also recently been testing it, and trying to draw attention as I do so--though a riot is hard to create at Wegmans where shoppers are just too pampered and happy in their early senility. For the last several months I have been signing with the name "Mortimer Shy", clearly a made up name if I ever heard one, and this flies seen and unseen. Also, you don't have to have any money in your account at that exact moment, either, but that is a different matter. The point seems to be that we are living in a world where we are made to repeat useless gestures, kind of like people in a senility ward, waving to their old friends and knitting with imaginery knitting needles. Unfortunately, I could go on . . .
# opined by 
: 2:57 PM, May 11, 2006
: 2:57 PM, May 11, 2006
Tangentially: I was amused to overhear a bit of advice given to a soon-to-be-published writer. He was told to work on his "author's signature", so that it could be contrasted to his "cheque-signing" signature. Your post highlights the absurdity of this bit of advice. A nefarious mischief maker with access to my account could sign "Emily Dickinson" and get the money with nary an eyebrow raised.
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<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
