FINGERPRINTS THAT DON’T REGISTER

October 17, 2015

After almost a decade of waiting for it to be re-installed again, we at the office are now going back to the fingerprint scanning for attendance monitoring.  Thankfully, I have always belonged to those whose thumbprints take only one reading to register.  Unfortunately, some of my officemates wonder why in their cases it takes two or three times for the machine to finally acknowledge their fingerprint.

In my previous employers prior to joining the government service, I too was subjected to the same time-keeping devices.  There was even one where the ID barcode was scanned and our photos taken while we were in the act of having our ID’s scanned.  They say that for people who wash their hands too much, or those who are advancing in age, the fingerprints also seem to fade a little, making it harder for the machine to read the same.

I planned to crack a joke that maybe the machine is saying that my officemates who are having a difficult time having their fingerprints scanned are starting to disappear.  But then, I realized that in real life too, there are cases when not only our fingerprints, but our whole person seems to start getting blurred in the eyes of other people and even in our own.

Especially if we distance ourselves from other people and slow down contact, people really do seem to forget that we exist.  For those who have spent a lifetime thinking over all the hardships and stresses of life, there are those whose own minds start failing them and they start to de-recognize themselves and their loved ones.  But for crime investigators, no fingerprint is ever wasted no matter how lightly the impression was made, unless they are being misled or made a party to the obstruction of the resolution of a criminal case.

It makes sense therefore, that we take care of the day-by-day interactions we have with other people, because it forms part of our memories with them, and the impressions left with us will last a lifetime.  Even my own deceased grandparents can recall their old friends and loved ones on their deathbed, and the happy and difficult times they shared some eight decades ago.  Their fingerprints may have blurred, and their minds failed at the last second, but their emotions never wavered. 

Let us make the most of today so that when our time comes, even though our fingerprints may not register anymore and our minds fail, we can still conjure all our happy memories with those who we have spent a lifetime with and feel their love even in our last breath.