In Which We Get Fingerprinted

Today was a pretty good day.

I dropped Connor off at school and headed straight for Bradley Park, where I continued furthering my connection with the pavement.  Today I decided to work on the two kinds of stopping that are the most basic for roller derby; the Plow and the T-Stop.  The Plow is pretty much what you do when you're on skies and want to stop; you widen your stance and turn your skates in towards one another.  I can manage that one.  The T-Stop is a little bit different; basically you are putting all of your weight on the front skate and dragging the back skate perpendicular to the front skate until the friction makes you stop.  Or at least that's what supposed to happen, and it occurs with me about one out of ten times.  The other nine times I put my weight on my front skate, drag my back skate perpendicular to the front skate and launched myself skyward.  Oh well; I'll figure it out eventually.  In the meantime I'm very grateful I'm wearing full gear!

After Connor came home and had his Zen Time (i.e. defunct nap time) we took off for Seattle because it was time for our fingerprinting appointment!  You have to be fingerprinted by the Department of Homeland Security during the international adoption process.  So that was an interesting trip; they have those crazy high tech biometrics scanners that take digital impressions of your fingerprints.  Our fingerprinting went relatively quickly and was uneventful, but it got me thinking.  Connor didn't have to have his fingerprints taken because it's highly unlikely he's committed too many felonies in his four years of existence, but in another ten years or so he'll have to have them done to get a military ID.  That's going to be a problem.

Connor doesn't have any fingerprints.

Really!  Absolutely none.  The big lines that cross everyone's palms just continue up onto the tips of his fingers.  The lines on his palms are kind of off, too-- I'm not entirely sure he even has lifelines.  Whenever I see a fortune teller at the farmer's market I'm always tempted to take him over just to watch their reaction when they see his palms.  I'm not exactly sure what they'll do about fingerprinting for him in the future-- I guess it will be whatever they do for people without hands. 

Right now the only issue he has with not having them is that it makes it much harder for him to grip things (because his fingers are slick) and also he can't really make those thumb print animals that are so popular for craft times.  Tragic!

~Jess