“Studies reveal the mystery of gifted people often having bad handwriting. It’s because their brain is working faster than their hands.”
—Author unknown, but I’m signing on to it.
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Put your John Hancock right here,” the nice teller instructed with a practiced smile. In those prehistoric, pre-ATM days, being 400 miles from home and short on cash was a high-stakes adventure.
“Here you go,” I replied, sliding the signed check and pen back across the counter.
Her smile faltered. “Is this … ah?”
“Aldridge,” I assured her, putting forth my most convincing smile.
“I’ll need identification with a matching signature.” With that, she dialed my bank in Center as I waited, watched, and wondered. Worrying. Would I be hitching a ride to get home?
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” she said, counting out the bills, “but it’s for your protection. We always double-check when a signature looks forged.”
“Forged?” My smile waned.
“Well, the way you sign your name, it looks a bit like ‘Arp,’” she laughed. This wasn’t the first time my penmanship had been insulted. There is evidence, however, that my teachers did their job. Historical documents still exist with my name penned in perfectly legible script.
The downfall began, as I recall, following college and the start of a career. Coincidentally, around the time I signed a marriage license, though I’ll avoid drawing any dangerous parallels there for safety’s sake. Mostly mine.
Today, though, who scrutinizes a signature anymore? What’s a signature really worth?
Graphologists—a fancy term for handwriting analysts—claim our artistic loops, eloquently crossed ‘t’s, and even the “loop and a line” variations reveal our deepest secrets. Friend and former colleague, Lois Cooper, used to say that every time we drop a “John Hancock,” we reveal traits as unique as a fingerprint. Lois claimed to have the “gift,” but she refused to analyze mine. Claimed she didn’t like to “read” people she knew.
I think I learned why Lois felt that way, from a total stranger at an out-of-town dinner party. She was the guest of a guest, a visitor who knew no one in the room or in the community. When the friend with whom she was attending turned the conversation to her skills, she shied away. Eventually, however, she gave in to the group’s curiosity.
At her direction, we wrote a couple of sentences in cursive on a blank sheet of paper. No name. “You will know yours,” she smiled.
We watched intently as she opened each folded note, studied it for a few seconds, and delivered unsettlingly detailed descriptions. I tuned in when she started with, “This is a middle-aged, right-handed male. Tall—six feet. More of a ‘right-brain’ artsy type than a ‘left-brain’ detail person.”
I started listening more closely.
“He works in a professional office setting, likely a supervisory position. Loves music, art, and creativity. A writer, perhaps?”
Then she got spooky. “He’s married; children, more than one. Two … or is it three? I’m not sure.”
“And he has an injury scar on his right leg, lower. Ankle or foot maybe?”
I not only stopped smiling, I had to check my breathing. I’m exactly six feet tall. She nailed my personality, my career, and my family. Right down to the children, even in her hesitancy. Two living children was correct. But three, counting our firstborn son we lost a week before his first birthday—an event that occurred some six years prior to that night. Scars? A large one on my right ankle. From a lapse in good judgement during high school.
After getting my breath back, I smiled. Faintly. Thinking that if that bank teller had been one of those graphologist types, she would’ve known that I was not a forger.
The faint smile grew as I thought about how our signatures, like our stories, are unique, often messy. We spend our lives writing them and watching them change. Hoping the world reads the mystery and meaning behind them in good faith.
So, if my signature is that telling—yet that messy—maybe I should just lean into the mystery.
“Hello, my name is Leon Arp.”
It has a catchy ring to it, don’t you think?
—Leon Aldridge
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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting his next challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’
A Story Worth Telling 