Some of us put more effort into our John Hancock than others. Are you the only one who can actually read yours?

It makes sense that some of us stop trying hard after a while — you sign so many documents throughout your life that it hardly seems worth the effort after your thousandth check, contract, or permission slip. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with making things look nice. Many of us practiced our signatures in our notebooks as children, sometimes immediately after learning cursive; something about it felt cool and adult in a way that was rare at the time. Not all of us kept that energy as we grew up, however.