Postcards From Across the Pond

Many years ago, I gave this advice to my children:

“If you want to be the best in the world at something, pick a subject no one else is interested in.”

I told them this, not only because I excelled at giving rubbish advice to my children, but also because I had recently become the world’s foremost expert on The History of the American System of Fingerprint Classification, a subject that—as noted above—no one else in the world cared a whit about.

This all came about because I had been promoted to the position of Fingerprint Instructor, meaning I got to teach fingerprint identification and classification to recent high school/college graduates who couldn’t get a real job and had to stoop to taking the BOW (Beginning Office Worker) test for the State of New York and, instead of getting posted to Tax and Finance, or Environmental Conservation, were stuck on the night shift at the Division of Criminal Justice Services where, at three in the morning, they had to listen to me drone on about double-loop whorls and tented arches. To say that staying awake in these classes was a challenge would be an understatement.

There was, however, a single exciting (unless fingerprints excite you) module involving the Division’s history. It was brief, but intriguing, so I expanded on it.

Over the course of a few years, I dug into the background of the people and politics involved, ferreted out new facts and managed to put it all together into an interesting story. I had so much information I actually wrote a booklet about it for my agency and published numerous articles in the Journal of Forensic Identification, as well as local and regional newspapers. I spoke at conferences (yes, they have Identification System Conferences), contributed to a PhD student’s thesis, and for a few years was an annual guest lecturer at the State University at Albany. And all because no one else could be arsed.

Eventually, I was promoted out of that job, went into computers, and ended up as a project manager at the Office of Mental Health, and never again achieved as high a pinnacle as The World’s Foremost Expert. In anything.

Not that I haven’t had the opportunity. As I noted in an earlier blog, I have been playing guitar since I was 16. That’s half a century of uninterrupted practice. You would think, by now, that I would be a virtuoso, but the reality is, my playing has never progressed beyond pounding out basic chords to a standard rhythm. I have—and still do—play in front of audiences, and I’m tolerable, but anyone watching me would think I took the guitar up on a whim a few months back. But then, I never set out to become a master guitar player. All I wanted the guitar for was to accompany my singing, which is another thing.

I started singing as soon as I could talk, ignoring people who told me to “shut it” and that I sucked. I was in several choirs, entertained in folk services, coffee houses and, eventually, bars and clubs. I knew I could sing, and I knew I sang well, but it was just something I did. It never occurred to me, until much later, that my years of singing might have made me a really good singer. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for me to realize that, as good as I thought I was, I was merely above average. And no amount of practice was ever going to change that.

As Stephen King once noted—in referring to his musical abilities—you can refine sand all you want, but you’re still going to end up with sand.

And speaking of Stephen King: I have been writing nearly as long as I have been singing, but my books have not exactly set the world on fire. And, in thinking about the sand analogy above, I don’t expect they ever will.

I showed some early promise, however. My humorous articles appeared regularly in local and regional publications, and I even got a few articles in the national magazines, but alas, that spark of success did not result in a raging fire.

Therefore, after fifty-six years of grafting (I caught the writing bug when I was eleven, you do the math) I have never had a book on the Best-Seller list, I have not become a household name, and nothing I have written has ever been optioned by Hollywood. (Though, as noted in the aforementioned, earlier blog, that has saved me from drowning in Keira Knightley’s pool, so, swings and roundabouts and all that.)

My writing, however, includes blogging, and having rethought my criteria for blog longevity, and confirming that Mr. Hall has genuinely abandoned Links.net, I am now confident that I am the proprietor of the Longest Running, Active Blog on the Internet. I know I say that with tongue securely in cheek, and I realize it is a daft superlative, but the truth is, I genuinely believe it, and I genuinely think it deserves some sort of recognition. Unfortunately, I’m pretty much alone in that, and I’ve had no luck coming up with any way to capitalise on it. I did write to the local paper—you know, the ones who report about potholes and who grew the longest runner beans at the Agricultural Fair—and heard nary a peep. I guess they are more interested in runner beans than someone in their midst with a World Record, or they’re waiting for a slow news day. It could, however, be—and most likely is—that they simply couldn’t give a shit.

And so, I continue through life as a Jack-of-all-Trades, but certainly master of none, never again to have the accolade of Worlds Best bestowed upon me.

But just the other day, a colleague from my old office, who I haven’t heard from in over 30 years, suddenly contacted me. I was sceptical at first, fearing that he wanted to sell me Amway products, or was actually an impostor who would send me an innocent-looking link that, when I clicked on it, would empty my bank account, but I soon discovered it really was him, and that he had a favour to ask:

A young woman putting together a commemoration for the 50th anniversary of the Division, was looking for some history, and he wanted to know if he could put her in touch with me.

Because I am still, after all, the World’s Foremost Expert on the History of the American System of Fingerprint Classification.