Our signatures are unique

by Peter Twitchell

There were two signatures I liked when I was a boy growing up, and that was Mom and Dad’s. When Mom went to the B.I.A. School in the 1920s the teacher was adamant about clearly and legibly writing your name. Not so doing would mean sitting quietly in a corner in front of class.

Writing clearly meant your name could be read with the strokes of the letters joined together and the angles rounded. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Once you got the idea what the instructor wanted, learning to write the letters of the alphabet, you practiced over and over again writing your name until the elaborate technique of writing in cursive became natural.

Signatures were elegant, people had beautiful handwriting.

I could never write my signature as good as Mom and Dad. At best, I signed my name like a 4th grader. Now my signature on my Driver’s License looks exactly like the head and beak of a bald eagle. And on my personal checks my signature, which is done in 2.5 seconds, looks exactly like a king salmon head.

My son David when he began signing his name did it exactly like my Dad – his uppa David, and although I was amazed, I wasn’t surprised.

Nowadays, even executives can sign an important document with one or two letters and a straight line or twirl their pen in a bunch of circles like a spring coil. And as long as their name is there in block letters, the document is legit and good as gold.