Signing papers is a fact of life.
Sign this, sign that, and move on.
If you’ve signed and weren’t convinced you knew what you were signing?
Welcome to the club.
While this isn’t a post warning about signing anything, it is about being careful.
Older people like me have signed tons of paper. We used to sign every time we used a credit card.
After extensive research on signing papers (asking my wife) I’ve learned there are big papers and little papers, which I already knew but I like to include her point of view.
Me: Honey, what are the most important papers you’ve signed.
Her: Most important?
Me: Yes, most important.
Her: Our wedding license.
Me:
Her: What about you?
Me: Yep, me too.
A wedding license is a good place to start. It was on my list, and it makes sense in first place.
She and I went through the list:
Birth certificates, death certificates, school admissions, professional license, house loan.
We’ve both had more, but you get the idea.
Younger people will sign many of the same papers in time.
Some of them signed with regret, most with good intentions, and one that is the key to a happy life with a happy wife.
We covered that one.
Signing Up For Life
This was one of the happiest days of my life, then and now.
My wife still asks me about my smile.
Signed, sealed, and delivered.
Like a fool I went and stayed too longNow I’m wondering if your love’s still strongOo, baby, here I am, signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours!
Then that time I went and said goodbyeNow I’m back and not ashamed to cryOo, baby, here I am, signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours!
Here I am babySigned, sealed, delivered, I’m yours(You got my future in your hands)
From signing papers from that day onward has been a bond with the institution of marriage with someone who knows all about a bond.
Wife: It’s the most important paper I’ve signed.
Me: Yes, it is.
Wife: And we only had to do it once.
Me: So far.
Signing Papers, Other Papers.
Straight out of high school my wise parents took me to the bank and I signed up for a student loan.
$900 covered more than tuition for freshman year, along with wrestling scholarship money.
I signed up for student debt more than once back then.
‘It’s practically free money. You’d be a fool not to take it.’
I had a bad reaction after that first year and found a remedy.
The G.I. Bill.
I signed papers for a two year enlistment, served as a medic at a civil service clinic in the Defense Personnel Support Center on Oregon Ave. in South Philadelphia where Rocky lived in the movie.
I was there the same time it was being filmed, but didn’t see anything.
Animal House was filming while I was at University of Oregon; I saw the frat house and nothing else.
I was busy with my own animal houses.
One thing led to another, a long way of saying I dropped out. Again.
I finally signed off on a college degree in 1991 that I’d started in 1973.
It meant more to me than it did anyone else that day.
The student who stood up as the most inspirational story of my graduating class was a single mom with two kids and a full-time job.
She fit my profile, except for the single part.
It was a moment that had been a long time coming.
Common Baby Boomer Moments
When you sign something you’re making a promise.
I didn’t sign my diploma, but three other people did.
Their signatures are a promise that this piece of paper is authentic and legal with ‘all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto.’
If I’d been an English major I might complain about the vocabulary, but as a history guy not so much.
What has higher education done for me?
It’s given me a more sensitive shit-detector.
Like boomers everywhere, and Portland baby boomers in particular, a sensitive shit detector is an important tool.
Unless you live with your head in the sand, like too many millennials think is happening, or your head up someone’s backside, which is more likely given the times, you know shifty behavior when you see it.
When a man, a grown man in a suit, says of his boss, with vigor, “He is possibly the only man in the universe with solutions to our problems,” there’s a strong stench.
If a man answers a yes or no question with list of spurious accolades, he’s letting one rip.
In my experience, maybe your’s too, when a worker talks to their manager about a raise, and the manager puts them on the ‘To Be Fired’ list, something stinks.
When a worker wants their new company to do things the way their old company did, and complains to their manager, they have a problem, not the company.
But it still stinks.
Worst of all is the boss who can’t make up their mind.
It’s one way one day, another way the next.
A food cart serving pizza is different than an ice cream truck.
Why can’t they be the same?
Welding metal is different than gluing wood.
Why can’t they be the same?
You expect stupid questions from a stupid guy, and when the stupid guy is the boss they need help.
I hope there’s someone with a history degree around to help explain the importance implied by signing papers, the importance of papers signed in the past that keep the business stable, and how the papers signed will affect others downstream.
I finish today with this reminder:
Spread the word.
As a blogger on a blog, a writer writing it out, no one benefits from pollution in the air, water, or on land.
If there is a benefit, it goes to the pollution creator who turns a blind eye to the cause and effects of doing business.
No one wants to smell the stink downstream, down wind, or in their food.
Am I right?
About David Gillaspie
