Ink, Scans, and the Digital Trail I Can’t Outrun ( You Can Get Anything You Want… at the Licensing Office)



There was a time—not long ago—when I thought I’d finished all the weird hoops required to become a licensed, credentialed, officially government-approved human being. I’ve passed tests. I’ve paid fees. I’ve driven hours in pursuit of laminated cards and mysterious stamps. And now, as of this week, I’ve apparently been fingerprinted so many times I’m starting to wonder if the feds are building a mosaic.


Yesterday I drove to Florence for digital fingerprints—quick, clean, and impersonal. The kind where your fingers dance across a sleek scanner like they’re auditioning for a futuristic piano recital. And today? Well, today I’m at the local sheriff’s station, pressing inked fingers onto a card like it’s 1956 and I just got picked up for stealing hubcaps and talking back to a teacher.




That’s two days, two States, two separate fingerprinting methods. Same guy. Same prints. Slightly less dignity with each stop.


Now, I don’t want to sound paranoid—but somewhere, deep in the government catacombs of Washington, D.C., I suspect there’s a folder. Not a digital file—no, no, this feels too personal for that. This is a manila folder, slightly worn at the edges, stuffed with my fingerprints, photocopies of my old licenses, and maybe a few screenshots of dumb things I’ve said online.


It probably has a label like:

“BERG, NATHAN — Frequent Traveler / Occasional Smartass”


And somewhere near the back, in red ink:

“Loyal to wife. Prone to sarcasm. Bullied Andrew Cuomo on social media and caught a 30 day ban. Likely to rescue animals under duress.”


I know Alice’s Restaurant says it best:


“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant—excepting Alice.”


But around here, you can get anything you want except a streamlined process for proving you are, in fact, still you.


Just in the past few months I’ve submitted:


  • My birth certificate
  • My social security card
  • A bill with my name on it
  • Another bill with my middle name on it
  • A notarized letter saying “this is really me”
  • And now, roughly 46 prints of my own fingers in various poses



All so I can do the job I’ve been doing for years.


At this point, between the fingerprint appointments and the endless ID renewals, I’m beginning to think I’m less of a person and more of a recurring side character in a bureaucratic comedy nobody’s watching.


Some people collect stamps. Others hike the Appalachian Trail. I take photos looking like potatoes and leave biometric data across the Carolinas. Different strokes.


But maybe that’s the cost of entry these days—prove you’re real, repeatedly, across different mediums, until someone says “fine” and prints your license out on that weird thermal paper that curls in your wallet like a strip of bacon left too close to the sun.




Final Thought:

I’ve been fingerprinted more than a cold case. Somewhere out there, my thumbprint is drying on a card next to a stale donut, and my scanned image is flickering in a dusty server room next to a fax from 1993. If this is what it takes to keep doing the job, so be it.


But if anyone in Washington is reading this—yes, I did say that thing online, and no, I don’t regret it.


(And if you are in fact, keeping tabs on me I would just like to save for the record that that speeding ticket on the Palisades Parkway was a complete set up job..)


Also, if you’re keeping an eye on me. In a government file or here online, take a moment to subscribe




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