Today, I went to my local law-enforcement establishment to get fingerprints. The state of Minnesota is very particular about who substitute teaches in their classrooms, so I'm in the process of getting a substitute teaching license. Fingerprints are just one part of that process.
Going in, I was worried about having inky fingers for the rest of the day. Turns out that ink is no longer part of the process! Instead, I spent about 10 minutes rolling my fingers around on special optical scanners. First, they did a whole-hand print of each of my hands. I got some water sprayed on my palms (being damp helps), spread it around, then rolled my hands across a clear acrylic tube with scanning stuff inside. Then, each finger was moistened with a damp paper towel, and I rolled the fingers across a flat scanning pad.
The process was actually quite interesting. In my case, I had to roll each finger three times across the pad. The machine then calculated how well my fingers scanned and accepted the best scan for each one. The speed, wetness of my finger, and amount of pressure applied all influenced how well I scanned. I was worried about being difficult (ideally, you'd only need one scan of each finger), but the lady doing the prints assured me it was fine. Her least favorite? Manual workers, like road crew or construction workers, because their fingers are often worn down or marred from the heavy work.
Now, just in case anything ever happens to me, there is a record of my fingerprints. Just one more step to being a cog in the machine, I suppose, but I don't feel too threatened by this recording of my individuality. Yes, it's now harder for me to disappear should I ever chose to. Somehow, though, I don't think this will be a problem.