Fingerprints

I have gotten my license and am now an official DC Tour Guide. I will be taking busloads of high school students from around the world on tours of DC as an employee of WorldStrides. They ask a lot of their employees. They handed me a guidebook of 86 pages, each with a different monument or attraction on it, and questions that I need to be able to answer. As the answers are not there, I need to research them myself. For example: at the Jefferson Memorial, on the back side of Tom’s statue there are four symbols carved into his shoe. What are the symbols and what do they mean?
I have a lot of work to do before I am ready for my first gig in June.

What I HAVE done in preparation, in addition to obtaining the license, is:

1. Got a TB shot (negative: I do not have TB)
2. Got my passport, driver’s license, SS card et al notarized
3. Signed a pile of forms giving out all the information that you’re never supposed to give anyone
4. Went to the Arlington County Courthouse and got fingerprinted

This last is worth telling about. The cop who did the job seemed to be struggling. Assuming that I was doing something wrong – after all, he’s a cop and his job is to make people feel like they are doing something wrong – I asked “Is something wrong?” He replied, “You have very shallow prints.”

No one’s ever mentioned this before. I had no idea if this is considered an asset in some circles, but clearly, he was disturbed by it. I asked the obvious:
“Is this related to aging?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What generally causes this to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“What can be done about it?”
“You can’t do anything. I have to keep rolling your fingers around and let the computer decide if any of these scans are good enough.”

So that is what happened. I made it out of there without being thrown into Fingerprint Jail. During the process, just to keep things friendly, I mentioned that I am an artist. “Well,” he said. “THAT could it explain it. It must be all those chemicals you use.”
“Have you ever fingerprinted an artist before?”
“I don’t know.”
End of conversation.

But should it ever come up in cocktail party conversation, you can now say that you know someone with shallow prints.
End of blog entry.