Ode To Mr. Fingerprint

We can’t figure it out, exactly.  There isn’t one thing that we can point to and say, “Yeah!  That’s were everything became too much.”

But somewhere along the way, this little adventure piled up and reduced both of us to tears.  How the Army manages to organize itself enough to go around the world killing people – unless through excessive paperwork – still mystifies me.  But I can say that if they just stuck to the paperwork – threatened to attack the terrorists with administrative paperwork – world peace would be ho-hum news. 

“We give up!  We recant!  Never mind all that Allah stuff!  We’re Americans now.  Look, look, we’re buying Hummers and we all have flat-screen T.V. in our camel-skin tents with only CNN and Disney channels on them.”

I will say this:  With exception of the laudable fingerprint dude, I have never been to an Army office and gotten done what I came there to do on my first attempt.  Never.  And, for the guy to do my fingerprints that day, he had to overlook 2 reasons to send me away. 

If I’d had a trophy, I would have given it to him.  I DID sing his praises; describing his feat in a halting, emotional, too-grateful voice.

“I….I….I just want to let you know that.  *AHEM!*  Sorry, something in my throat.  Some sort of lump.  Anyway….”

Corpulent man in too-short square tie knit by kids in Taiwan R.O.C. funded by Wal-Mart stares dully, shifting slightly in his creaking office chair.

“You’re the first, EVER, to give me what I came to get on my very first attempt!  It’s a record.  Over the past 6 months, in dozens – maybe hundreds – of office visits my wife and I have needed to make just so I can do a job, you’re the first to not send me away on my first request.”

“Huh.  That’s good.  Fill out an I.C.E. card, alright?”

“What’s that?”

“A card.  You know, a card.  Tell ‘em how I’m doin’.  Let ‘em know I set you up.”

Right.  I.C.E. card.  I took that thing home, spent 45 minutes filling it up with love and gratitude toward the first man EVER to spare me making 2+ trips just to get a simple administrative task done.

Then I realized it would take another trip to that office to put the card in the guy’s box.

And I shredded the thing.