Last week we braved the wilderness of the Hannaford parking lot to bring home our Christmas tree. We settled on a seven-foot conifer trucked down from Aroostook County, the northern bulk of Maine. The money we paid went to Kiwanis International – an admirable organization dedicated to serving and strengthening local communities through goodwill and volunteerism. I initially thought the Kiwanis were dedicated to funding genetic research to finally fuse an iguana and a kiwi, but the Internet has proven me wrong once more.

After a week in our living room, I don’t have to fill the tree stand with water three times a day; we have reached stasis. Despite trimming the tree carefully—adding our bobbins, lights, and Spider-Man collector ornaments delicately—we still vacuumed up enough pine needles to build a quite decent scale model of Oregon. Neither Hazel nor the cats have managed to bring down crushing, festive injury upon themselves. With the gifts now wrapped and stowed under the tree, I’m sure the temptation will be even greater.

At work, our holiday card is ready to ship. We send out about 200 or so to our board and important contacts. When they arrived last week, the staff (all 13 of us) was asked to sign them using either blue, black, red, or green ink. I piped up asking if we couldn’t just use digital signatures in the future, but was told that option would be too impersonal and counter to the spirit of the season. So I went through and slapped my John Hancock on each card, trying my best to keep the scratching pen tip (I chose black ink – very festive) free of any undercurrent of spite I may be feeling about this task.

When we were all done, I flipped through the pile. Despite the excellent consistency I saw in my placement and overall appearance, I could not help but notice that my signature absolutely sucks. Not too give too much away to any identity thieves in my readership, but my signed name looks nothing like “John”. It starts out like the EKG readout of an epileptic man under attack from a troupe of rabid mandrills and finishes with said man flat-lining. I’d like to change it, but I think I am locked in by both legal necessity and muscle memory. I cannot create a smooth flow when signing my name no matter how many times I try. And I can’t blame the rising and falling length of my surname as the culprit as Megan has not succumbed to this after almost five years of signing her married name.

A co-worker suggested that this is a male/female thing, but I don’t think that holds up. One of the best signatures I’ve seen is J.R.R. Tolkien. This is a fellow who spent a lot of time writing, but his signature never suffered. It’s artful, it’s legible, and it’s everything I’d like my name to be. Of course, I don’t think I could get away with the tri-dotted delta flourish.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Family, Work It, Yule Get Yours!.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.