MY TURN

I have been keeping a close eye on my Monday schedule waiting for someone to fall off of  it right after our lunch hour.  I have blocked time off to get my fingerprints done in two weeks, but I was hoping to get them done sooner (since Ray just completed this task last week).  A co-worker told me that she "lost" her two pm patient (meaning the patient canceled), so we slid my patient over to her column and blocked my two pm slot with an "event".  This way I could slip out of the office right after my one pm patient and get to the courthouse.  Easy enough.  I knew the routine since Ray had just been through it. I left my cell phone in the car, and without my asking, the Sheriff announced to me that fingerprints were still being done.  I just needed to go around the corner and take a seat on the bench.  I rounded the corner at 1:45 pm, and there was the line up.  Actually (whew), there was a woman and her two children in front of me, and I don't think the children were getting their prints done.  Once she went behind the closed door with the police officer, another woman came up to me from the wrong bench and sat next to me.  I thought long and hard about letting her go next, but she said she wasn't in any hurry and was just happy that the Sheriff was now directing people where to go.  When she arrived, no one said a word to her, and this is why she sat on the wrong bench.

Once I was behind the closed door, the Sheriff mentioned to me that Stafford County would finally be going "electronic" with its fingerprinting.  This way our prints would be locked into the system and easy to look up when necessary.  He asked about where I would be working.  I forgot that people would be going to have their prints taken for new jobs.  I told him I wasn't there for a job.  I was there for an FBI background check.  I told him Panama required this if I wanted to try and obtain a Residency Visa there once I retired there.  He said, "Panama."  He told me to live in a quiet part of Panama, and he also told me that if there was any shaking up going on there, "to just come home".   I found that last sentence very interesting, because while the US will always be home to me, I hope that I can be comfortable enough in Panama eventually to call it home, too.