He is the single most bureaucratic bureaucrat I’ve ever met in my entire life. There I am — happily working through the steps required to prove that I’m not a serial killer (which I’m not, in case you were curious) so that I can be an adoptive Dad (which I’m pretty certain I’d be good at, just a hunch). And there, standing between me and my future, is a wet dishcloth.
Truth be told, he can’t be someone who is wildly passionate about his job. After all, spending day in and day out entering people’s fingerprints into a digital print reader can’t be that exciting, and certainly he has to engage in this monotonous task with folks in need of fingerprinting for far more nefarious reasons. But you’d think that he’d perk up when someone came in with the altruistic goal of being a proud papa.
Yeah, you would — but you’d be wrong.
Instead, Mr. Flat Affect mumbles you through the steps, stopping only to express his distain at the fact you can’t get your wedding ring off because you are one of those rare men who hasn’t removed it from their finger since the day they were married (in my case, 13+ years ago). When you ask whether or not this is a problem, he musters a vocal indication of mild annoyance when replying “WELL, I DON’T WANT YOU TO SCRATCH MY GLASS”.
Last time I checked my wedding ring doesn’t cover my fingerprint, I snap in my head – best to keep it inside in case he decides to throw me out of the DMV.
Nevertheless he puts on the required rubber gloves, and one by one smashes the tips of my fingers against the glass. After a brief moment of buzzing my prints appear on the screen — enshrined forever in whatever database CSI’s apparently use to find the bad guys.
I express my thanks in one last attempt to get him to smile, grab my stuff and walk out of the florescently-lit, windowless office, so that he can move on to his next exciting appointment.
