The myth of fingerprints
We drove to remote St. Bernard Parish to the sheriff’s office to get fingerprints for our adoption study. As we came over the Green Bridge, even though it is not Green, we saw evidence that the world is flat — there was nothing in front or to the right or to the left except flat, flat land, with water filling up all available space.
At the Sheriff’s office, there was a motley crew of folk waiting. There was the woman waiting to get her purse which was confiscated, although when the officer brought it, she said that was the purse they had taken a while back when she was arrested another time. Then there was a guy, who wanted to know why I needed fingerprints. Then a woman walked in that barely spoke English and inquired if they had some guy, whose name she rattled off, inside. And there were others with unknown missions sitting and waiting.
The entire fingerprinting was handled by Larry, Curly, and Moe and was truly an event to behold as the officers bantered about who would get the hamburgers, who was defter at capturing the finger images, my last name (which one officer said he wanted to change his name to), and strict adherence to seemingly innocuous rules and regulations like walk here, stand there, all the way to how they handled the $15 in cash required to get said fingerprints.
We left this remote corner of the world and I thanked my lucky stars that any reason I had to be there had been taken care of even though as T said, there was something interesting about the area and the birds along the waterways leading into Bayou Bienvenue were graceful and rare.