I feel like I am always signing something. Pay with credit card? Signature please. Package delivery from Fed Ex? Please sign here. Autograph to a devoted fan? Yeah, right. The fact is, it takes me a long time to sign my name because I do it neatly. And by long I mean several seconds as opposed to half a second. I have always admired people whose signature resembles a capital letter followed by a squiggle. I don't know if they practice it continuously or what, but I have never been able to master it. Actually, I used to know someone who wrote his signature over and over on blank paper instead of doodling. He told me this was a sign of either highly deficient self-esteem, or severe narcissism, but he wasn't sure which. Anyway, if I try to sign quickly, my signature just ends up looking like a sloppy version of itself, rather than a fancy squiggle. Plus, at what point do you decide to change your signature from neat and legible to personalized squiggle? Because you can't really sign something a new way if your signature is going to be checked against the signature on your credit card/library card/video rental card and you signed those things when you were still in your careful stage. I think in the olden days, when a lot of people couldn't read or write, if they had to sign their name, they just signed an "X". How was their identity verified then, I wonder?  ¶ 4:51 PM