I was helping my Dad today by pulling out all the plants from his flower bed. When I was done, he needed my signature on some documents for accounting purposes with Veterans Affairs. When he saw my signature, he told me to put my full signature- not my initals. I told him that WAS my signature.
He just gave me an exasperated look and shook his head... something older people do to me a lot, actually. Not sure why though, since it's quite understandable how my signature became what it is.
I spent sixteen years in the Canadian Forces Reserves as a Administration/Finance Clerk. When I first joined at the age of eighteen, my signature resembled this:
It was a perfectly normal, legible signature at that time. It was clean, precise, and would've caused serious damage to my fingers, wrist, and arm if I had continued to use it in my duties.
Why? Forms. Lots and lots of forms. Course reports, assessments, charge reports, stationary requests, computer asset requests, signing out and signing in of equiptment, signing paysheets, signing audit documents, signing destruction certification forms, signing memorandums, signing medical documents, signing Military Police documents, signing this, signing that.
So, over the course of my career, my signature evolved... or devolved depending on your point of view. After about two years of signing forms, my signature resembled:
But that wasn't enough to sign the multitude of forms quickly, AND keep my from injuring my vital digits. It was good for my personal, non-military correspondance... but I needed to find something that would allow me to get through all the forms I had to sign in a flurry, while keeping myself out of the Medical Inspection Room with a possible career ending cramp. Because of this need, my signature changed again to resemble:
But as you can imagine, this STILL wasn't good enough. No, it wasn't. My career was hanging in the balance! The forms that needed signing just kept coming and the stacks kept growing. I needed something succinct and quick. I realized that it didn't NEED to be something obvious- just something that could be legally considered a signature. By the end of my career- partly from having fine tuned my signature to it's essence... and because arthritis in my fingers was making it hard to write with a pen, my signature reached it's most pure, bare essential nature:
That's right, "M *scribble*" is my signature. Oh, I can hear you laughing out there. If you think my signature is funny, let me tell you about a former employer of mine. His signature is a squiggle with two dots. That's it. Just that. Oh... and he has a rubber stamp of it for signing forms...
