Handwriting Analysis

Today I went to a school fundraising carnival at a local elementary school with my aunt, cousins, and their visiting friend from England around my age, Emily. My aunt handed Emily and I a $20 bill she wanted to donate to the school and told us to go enjoy ourselves. Looking around at the bouncy castles, face painting, and various beanbag-toss-type games we started wonder if we could spend a whole $20 at a carnival of this sort and keep our dignity. A ten year old would have been in heaven. We wandered around for a while longer until we came upon one booth that looked interesting. There was a larger woman sitting at the table talking seriously to an 8 year old. A sign on her table announced "Handwriting Analysis, 7 tickets". This was it, the only way that we could spend our tickets that didn't involve some sort of balloon hat or making some kid cry in the bouncy castle.

My cousin, Jon, saw us in line and told us that it was "a waste of tickets," and that we "could pretty much buy a whole meal" at the concession stand with that many tickets... but determined, we decided to stick it out. As we drew nearer in the line we realized that this woman was very serious about her handwriting analysis, unlike the two frustrated balloon animal girls who kept popping balloons on even the simplest of balloon designs (I've done a bit of balloon animal creating once upon a time). The mother and daughter right before us in line basically left the table in tears, dazzled at this woman's ability to accurately interpret their signatures into a meaningful message complete with personality traits, difficult experiences in the past, and personal advice for the future. And in only 5 minutes. Wow.

I sat down at the table and tried to scribble my name on the sticky note pad as normal as possible under the circumstances. I'm not sure what I was expecting, for her to get it right or to blow it, but after my 5 minute analysis I walked away a little surprised. She certainly had gathered a lot of information from those few messy letters. Not all of it was totally accurate from my point of view, but the crazy thing was that a lot of it was correct. Is that just some sort of trick or is there actually something to this handwriting analysis stuff? Fact or in the same class as tarot card readers with long painted acrylic nails and the turban-wearing, crystal-ball-reading women named Lorna who sit in dim tents at carnivals. The woman's card says that she is a "Certified F.B.I. Instructor", and I guess that means something.