alexist: (Default)
alexist ([personal profile] alexist) wrote2003-05-20 03:34 am

Signatures

Age can bring surprising things.

In this case, it's the degeneration of my signature. When I was in my teens, I swore I would never develop a signature like my father's. He was a lawyer, but from his signature you'd think he'd gone to Harvard Medical School. It was that bad.

Until a couple of years ago, I was faithful to this vow. If you look at my driver's license or passport, you'll see a nice, legible script signature. It's not going to win any calligraphy awards, but the individual letters are discernible.

However, since then, it's gotten messier and messier. It started corroding from the inside. The rot has spread from the middle of the words to the ends. Now I start with a nice big A, and it trails off into a scribble. The other day, I looked at the register receipt I was signing and realized that the second half of the scrawl bore absolutely no resemblance to my last name. I had been in such a rush to sign it that I hadn't bothered actually forming the letters.

At this rate, my signature will be totally meaningless by the time I'm 30. I can't imagine what it will be like when I'm 50 or so.

While we're on the subject, what's with those electronic signature screens? The result looks absolutely nothing like any signature you'd produce with a pen and paper, so they're totally useless from a signature point of view. I'm dubious about signed register receipts in general. Sales staff don't seem to pay attention. THe other day I was in the liquor store. My mother had asked me to get her a bottle of wine, and had given me her credit card to pay for it. I gave them the card, and was promptly ID'ed. The clerk didn't notice the difference in the names. I then unthinkingly signed my own name (which I realized once I'd handed it to her) and SHE DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE!

[identity profile] phil99.livejournal.com 2003-05-20 01:14 am (UTC)(link)
Thing is with signature strips and receipts, is that when you take them as a "clerk", you don't READ them. All you do is look at them and check they look similar to the one on the card. your signature could say "Fuck you asshole" and half the time the person taking the card wouldn't notice because as long as it's similar to the one on the card, that's all that matters.

[identity profile] arosoff.livejournal.com 2003-05-20 11:08 am (UTC)(link)
Except my signature doesn't look one bit like my mother's!

[identity profile] verlaine.livejournal.com 2003-05-20 09:24 am (UTC)(link)
My signature remains ace. I'd go so far as to describe it as "operatic".

[identity profile] anam-uk.livejournal.com 2003-05-20 11:33 am (UTC)(link)
Don't think of it as corrosion, think of it as an artistic evolution, mine is becoming more & more minimal as the years pass, & I like it