Shh! For Confidential Eyes Only

I work in a law office. And I can’t tell you anything about my work, because two assistants ago, my boss had an employee who made the mistake of describing a client during dinner with her friends. Unbeknownst to the legal assistant, the client was sitting behind her at the time. The legal assistant was fired immediately, and thanks to our missing $23,075 deposit from the house we were supposed to buy last year, I kind of need my job right now.

But what I can tell you about is my notary seal.

My notary seal arrived a few days ago, with a plunk on our doorstep that brought all the dogs running and howling. I was home for lunch, and as I opened the door, the UPS man was just getting back into his truck. The dogs were disappointed that he had narrowly avoided being loudly reprimanded by them for daring to venture into their territory.

I had applied to be a notary some months ago, when my boss mentioned I would need to notarize documents for work, but hadn’t found the time to get around to being sworn in until I suddenly realized I only had two weeks before my entire application would be rescinded.

I found a local constable to swear me in, and I became a notary.

The tools of my trade were simple. A seal, some gold labels, and a piece of paper. First, though, I had to assemble the actual seal.

I brought the seal back to work with me after lunch and opened the box. Three slips of blue paper fell out. Two of them were identical, and detailed the three-step process to assemble my embossing seal.

1. Hold embosser with handle up and pull out the round embosser plates from the back of the embosser (Fig. 1).

   This seemed to translate to: “Hold the two parts of the embosser.”

2. With grooves on bottom of embosser plates facing down, squeeze plates together firmly and slide into seal press (Fig. 2).

   “Put one part into the second part.” So far, I was rockin’ this seal.

3. Metal tabs on seal press will lock into grooves on bottom of embosser plate.

   This last step seemed to be merely informational, so I ignored it.

Now that I was fully locked and loaded, I prepared to test my seal. I didn�t want to waste the gold labels, so I settled for using plain sheets of paper. I placed a sheet between my embosser and squeezed the handle.

Hmm. Half of the seal was nonexistent. I examined the third slip of blue paper that had come with my embosser, and saw that it held an impression of my seal. It looked pretty good. For one thing, you could actually see a complete notarial seal on the paper, instead of a weakly faded circle that gave up before it could even become an arc.

I tried again, this time pressing harder on the handle. Now I had a complete circle, but the inside of the seal was blank. There was supposed to be a little coat-of-arms type of picture in the center.

I picked up the directions. For all of its thoroughness in assembling the seal, there was very little on how to actually operate the seal. In fact, there wasn�t anything about how to operate it.

Maybe my hand was to blame. I still had pain in my hand from when the fish guy had knocked me down, and had seen my doctor about it last week. He’d said that I’d torn one of the muscles in my hand and was probably re-injuring it every time I felt the pain. I wasn’t able to put much pressure on it, and evidently the embosser required more strength than I had.

I tried to use my left hand on the embosser, but the effect was even worse. If this was in Braille, it would have been illegible. Using both hands on the handle, I was finally able to produce a somewhat faded but complete version of the sample seal the notary company had provided.

Now I was off and running. I notarized a few Post-It notes and lined paper. I notarized an envelope. I examined some scraps of paper which I�d used to jot down work notes, and after careful thought, I notarized my notes. Gradually I came to my senses and decided I�d better pack my notary seal away for now. Power was corrupting, and I needed to remind myself that I was no better than anyone else. Just because I could notarize didn�t mean I should, and I knew I had to wield my power judiciously.

Then again, maybe a web page can be notarized…

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | August 9, 2004 | 11:50 am
Posted in: This Life