printing my fingers

Today, I went and got my fingerprints printed. Can you say that? Let’s try again. Today, I went and had my fingers printed. It was simultaneously cool and weird.

Yesterday, I met with the HR manager at Temple Israel of Hollywood, my employer of this upcoming year, to go over payroll paperwork. It was a lot of fun, spending an hour filing out forms, writing my name, address, SSN, DOB, POB, DL#, etc many many times. Additionally, they require all new staff to be fingerprinted, so they can make sure I'm not a child molester or haven't committed statutory rape or some other such activities. Or, just that I don’t have a record of molestation and statutory. It was a little weird, because while I am going to be an employee of TIOH, they didn’t hire me. I was hired by DeLeT, and I'm also a part of DeLeT, and so you'd think that being a DeLeT fellow means I could skate by. But no, it couldn’t be that easy.

The HR guy gave a phone number to call, a state run company that submits my prints to both the FBI and the Department of Justice, compiles a report, and then sends it back to TIOH. Very exciting. So I went to this office in Culver City this morning, and, since it was in Culver City, even though I had perfect Google-map directions, I got lost.

After finding the building, I parked and walked into this office suite, and it got really surreal. There was a set of reception windows behind glass along one wall, but no one was behind the windows. The carpet was yellow and the room smelled like cherry juice. In the waiting chairs, there was an older woman with over bleached hair, in a beehive do, dressed in a frilly blouse, yakking away on her cell phone about banality and a very fat man with three chins sitting a few seats down from her. There was also a man sitting behind a folding table in the middle of the room, who, when I walked in and looked very confused, slurred, “Excuse me.”

I didn’t realize he was talking to me, and I said, “What?” “Excuse me, what do you want?” “I have an appointment for fingerprinting.” “Sit.”

That was it. He barely looked up from his newspaper. As I waited, people just kept walking in and out of the reception area, in and out of the office door. I couldn’t figure out what this office does other than fingerprint people, and yet it was strangely, very busy. All very hush hush.

I was called into the back room, gave the guy my form, and he processed the information. Then he pulled me up to a machine and printed my right hand, then my left, and then each finger individually. The machine was a scanner, except for fingers. It was kinda cool. Then I left.

I was confused about one thing though. If police can find criminals with part of one latent print, why did they need all ten of mine? Am I ten times the criminal that they need ten prints to find my nonexistent record? Joel Abramovitz, criminal mastermind. It seemed a little frivolous.