Ted Wilson Reviews the World: A Fingerprint

★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing a fingerprint.

Everybody has them. Well almost everybody. They’re called fingerprints and they’re nature’s way of ensuring that only guilty people are sentenced for crimes they’ve committed. Other than that, I’m not sure what the point of a fingerprint is.

While looking out my living room window to see if the mail was coming (it wasn’t), I noticed a fingerprint on the glass. To most people this would not be an unusual sight — glass is known for collecting fingerprints. However, I knew for a fact that I hadn’t touched this window in years. Not since I’d gotten a newer window that’s much more fun to touch. You’re welcome to come over and touch each of them for comparison. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

After painstakingly comparing this fingerprint to all of my own, I determined there was no match. So I contacted everyone who had ever been in my house, or who I suspected wanted to come into my house, like the paperboy who once longingly looked at my couch from the doorway and said, “I like your couch.”

Out of 126 people, only seven obliged and sent their fingerprints. None of those proved to be a match either.

I hated myself for ever noticing the fingerprint in the first place. So much so that I tried to just stop looking at things altogether. Most of the time I would just keep my eyes closed. I still had to look at some things, like stairs and money, but I would try and look as quickly as possible.

I considered the possibility that like many other parts of my body, my fingerprints are changing with age. No one ever checks for that. My ears have gotten bigger and I have more wrinkles, but can my fingerprints sag? A dentist I know said that’s not how fingerprints work, but she’s a dentist. It wasn’t a question about teeth.

I made a copy of the suspicious fingerprint and mailed it to the police and asked them to look into it for me when they had the time. I guess they haven’t had the time yet.

That’s when I decide to take matters into my own hands and just wipe the fingerprint away. I knew that I might be destroying evidence, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. If you’re the one who left the fingerprint on my window, please don’t ever contact me. I don’t want to hear about it, I just want this left in the past.

BEST FEATURE: I’ll have to get back to you on this one.
WORST FEATURE: It ruined my life for a few weeks.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Shelley Duvall’s duvet.