Love, Me - Learning to Sign (Part 2/3)
I recall that when I started needing to sign 'documents' for school. Such as attendance for excursions on the attendance sheet, or other stuff (I can't exactly remember what). I had about 3 or 4 different signatures, different patterns. Each one signed a different part of my name, like Liren, Ren, Zheng, Tay, Zheng Liren, Tay Liren. I'll leave it up to you guys to guess what my current signature is made up of. And no, it's not any of the above.
I remember looking at the signatures of the adults around me; my parents, teachers, even the school principal. I remember trying, not to fake the signatures, but to emulate them. I certainly didn't try to sign the signatures of the teachers I hated, only those I liked or at least had some form of respect for. Up till today, my dad has 2 signatures. I tried to imitate my dad's simpler one, not cos he used that one on my report books, but because it was the only one I saw. He used the other one for other major stuff like credit card transactions.
I remember spending hours trying to imitate their signatures. It felt like their signatures were for them a notation of their adulthood, and in my imitations, I craved to be initiated into the world of adults.
I chose between the different signatures. Should it be angular, or curvy? Simple, or complicated? English or Chinese? Bold or gentle? Long or short? From a mess of scribbles, they got narrowed down to the 3 or 4 which were nicer. Long pages of mess eventually became, still long pages of mess, but now the individual lumps of mess looked more homogeneous.
And I got confused which one I signed at different points. Especially for the bank accounts statements. But I guess the bank teller was gracious seeing my little kiddiness struggling with signaturising? :) Perhaps, I wasn't an adult yet no matter how badly I wanted to be one?
I remember looking at the signatures of the adults around me; my parents, teachers, even the school principal. I remember trying, not to fake the signatures, but to emulate them. I certainly didn't try to sign the signatures of the teachers I hated, only those I liked or at least had some form of respect for. Up till today, my dad has 2 signatures. I tried to imitate my dad's simpler one, not cos he used that one on my report books, but because it was the only one I saw. He used the other one for other major stuff like credit card transactions.
I remember spending hours trying to imitate their signatures. It felt like their signatures were for them a notation of their adulthood, and in my imitations, I craved to be initiated into the world of adults.
I chose between the different signatures. Should it be angular, or curvy? Simple, or complicated? English or Chinese? Bold or gentle? Long or short? From a mess of scribbles, they got narrowed down to the 3 or 4 which were nicer. Long pages of mess eventually became, still long pages of mess, but now the individual lumps of mess looked more homogeneous.
And I got confused which one I signed at different points. Especially for the bank accounts statements. But I guess the bank teller was gracious seeing my little kiddiness struggling with signaturising? :) Perhaps, I wasn't an adult yet no matter how badly I wanted to be one?
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