I am not a criminal Part Two

We got fingerprinted today. I took our application letter up to C's work where his secretary notarized it for us, then we drove to the fingerprinting place....the "Application Support Center".

This was on Northwest Highway at Webb Chapel in the Little Mexico district. Y'all who are familiar with Dallas probably realize this isn't the best part of town. At least we were down the road from all the strip joints and not right in the midst of them. We found the right address/grouping of strip malls, but had a hard time fiding the suite number. C kept saying that he didn't think this was going to be the right place. I assured him it was. He kept saying this didn't look like the right place to have this type of office. I think he needs to get out to govt. offices more often, LOL! This was exactly what I expected. The DMV's and vehicle registration buildings aren't in nice high rises...they are in run down strip malls.

We finally found the right number...in the back of the last strip. Parked between two cars I'm kinda surprised were even running. I swear, I'm not too much of a snob, but these were truly run down cars...in front of a Mexican clothing store with music blaring and walked past a taqueria on wheels and into a large room with lots of chairs.

You can't make an appointment for this type of thing. You just show up. When we showed up, there were lots of folks sitting in chairs and, near the entrance, a man who took our fingerprint notice and handed us some clipboards. He told us no cameras or cell phones were allowed and that if we had cell phones, we should take them out to the car. We both said 'okay" and then didn't do that. The prospect of leaving anything valuable in our car wasn't really appealing. As soon as we sat down, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned if off, holding it behind the clipboard. I don't think C ever turned his off...we just got lucky noone called him!

After filling out the clipboards, we presented our ID and each got a number. 152 and 153. Then we were told to sit back down and wait. There was a line behind us, and I couldn't tell at first how many people were in front of us, but finally found the number sign on the wall, which read 151.

So after about 5 minutes of nothing at all happening and me contemplating my emergency knitting out in the car, a lady appeared at the doorway to another large room and called our numbers along with several more. So we went in and they had us sit in order in six seats along one wall. Then the first guy got up and we were told to move one seat over as she brought more people in. But then she kept finding people who were ahead of us in line, like #150. So we all moved back one seat to allow him to be in the first seat. (There was also a guy ahead of me who didn't have a number, apparently.) Then she found #147, and we all moved back another seat and another person got sent back out to the waiting room since there were only six chairs in the queue. Then 147 got up and we all stayed seated in our seats until we were told to move one seat to our right again. It was hard to keep a straight face. It felt a lot like musical chairs and I told C that this must be how they get their kicks working there...making all the hapless people in line dance like monkeys.

We sat there a long while, waiting. There were some women working there wearing some rather questionable tight clothing and very uncomfortable looking high heels. I swear one woman was doing her best impersonation of a poodle, down to the prance. Her high heels looked about two sizes too small and she walked on her toes. I was now really thinking of my emergency knitting and wishing I had it.

So finally they called my number and when I got to the fingerprinting station, it was the guy who signed us in who was doing my prints. He was nice enough. It wasn't until he started typing in stuff and having me verify it that we realized they sort of messed up my name at the top of the fingerprint notice. They have my first name, my maiden middle name, and my married last name. See, when I got married, I took my maiden last name as my middle name and dropped the middle name I was given at birth. So for my "other names I've gone by" he put in my full maiden name and my full married name and I hope that doesn't cause any problems somewhere. Those are the only two names I've ever officially gone by and the one at the top of the from is a hybrid of both of them. I guess it will be okay with the Chinese govt because they will never see all this paperwork, only the end result, the 171-H which had better have my correct married name on it, or we will have problems.

But it isn't like I can talk to anyone to make sure they get my name right. I guess I can send another e-mail off into the black hole that is the CIS Oklahoma Sub-field Office.

The fingerprinting was kinda cool. They use digital machines and computers. They can tell after taking the print whether or not it is a good print. I was rather upset at myself for giving myself a fairly large double blood blister in the middle of my right pinky fingertip this morning, but he said he thought it would be okay, as the skin wasn't broken and the ridges were still visible. It just made my print look a tiny bit bubbly. I sincerely hope I don't have to do this all again just because I decided to trim my ivy this morning and the scissors pinched me.

So anyway, they have this little glass screen, kind of like a mini copier glass, and they clean it off and then they spray Windex on a cloth and then rub that on your fingertips each time they print them. First he held all my fingers on there together, then my thumb. Then he did each finger and each thumb individually by rolling from the left side to the right. He had to do my right thumb 5 or 6 times to get a print the computer approved of. Hopefully it would have rejected the pinky if it didn't like it. I've heard of people having to go back 2 or 3 times to get their prints accepted by the FBI or whoever runs these checks.

So no purple fingers today. Technology has come a long way, I guess. And now I need to print the correct form and send off to get our application letter authenticated by the state. I sent the rest of the Texas stuff off last week. I also need to find the right form on-line and send of C's birth certificate to California.