Like the time I took a semester of Forensic Penmanship (or whatever the course was called). That course was hard! We learned how to identify all these different tell-tale signs in people's handwriting: signs of stress, or mental disturbance, or various sorts of personality quirks and traits as conveyed and played out through their hand, made visible in the curves and lines of their written words.
So I did pretty well in the course, I learned all that stuff and then I said, "well how do I apply it?" Long story short: for the last ten years plus I've been writing like a psychopath.
I keep thinking, this is going to be such a great little trick on people who go in for this stuff! I keep hoping somebody is going to take a look at a note I wrote them, glance up worriedly, glance back down at the note, and go "uh...you know. I'm a little worried about your mental state, based on some of these cues I'm picking up here..."
That's when I can spring the net shut on the prank! Ha! Fooled you. Shouldn't have been so gullible on interpreting the signs (I'm also constantly mis-employing classic "body language" tipoffs)!
But nope. Effort totally wasted so far. Nobody ever picks up on it. It's like all that knowledge and application for naught.
Sometimes I get a close call. I'll get the glance up / worried look / glance back down, and then my hopes will shoot through the roof! My face will all light up in expectation, I'll be thinking "Is this the person who is actually hip to the signals? Is this the fruition I've been jonesing for, the big payoff on all my hard-working deranged-handwriting verisimilitude?"
But no. False alarm. Or at least, if they did catch the reference, they don't come right out and say so.
The worst part is, I can't bring it up. The joke wouldn't work right if I was the one to bring it up.
2 comments:
I was interested in graphology and I think I still have a book on it around here somewhere.
I didn't like what it told me about myself.
"graphology" is indeed the word! Thank you.
Strange, though - it sounds more like some kind of science of plotting points along a curve or whatever.
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