I TRIED TO FORGE MY HUSBAND’S SIGNATURE TODAY.

But my life of crime was cut short, since replicating a smashed mosquito proved more than I could manage. The best I could do was a ball of twine. Too easily detectible by the signature police.

My spouse is one of those “what you see is what you get” kind of guys, so his deliberate sprawling scrawl of an inky splat on the page is out of character. Not to mention illegible.

His signature contains nary a recognizable letter.

It looks more like the wild script of a frantic person who’s trying to force his pen to write in an emergency. Maybe the pen’s been in the back of the drawer for a couple of years and has lint stuck in that ball of ink gobbed on the end, so he has to scribble irrationally on a cereal box (the closest thing to the phone) in hopes of writing a number down before he forgets it.

Could he have had a momentary loss of his fine motor control? Maybe a bee landed on his thumb and he gyrated wildly to avoid being stung? That must be it.

According to a study published by the American Psychological Association, “in writing or artistic expression man not only communicates his conscious thought but also his underlying thought, a bio-psychological pattern … by which graphic movement becomes a ‘diagram of the unconscious.’”

Translation: There is a deep-seated reason why a perfectly laid-back, fun-loving, up-front fellow creates such an outrageous wad of tangled threads as a representation of himself! Loving husband on the surface; below decks, mysterious man of knotted nuance.

No sense asking him about it — the APA says he is ignorant of his own internal bio-psychological gobbledygook! In other words, he’s just not that deep.

Because of this major discrepancy between man and monogram, I did a little research. We’ve been married 24 years now, but I may not know my own husband!

Best to check with WikiHow and learn the secrets of personality revealed by his autograph. A wife can’t be too safe.

Ah, here we go. How to Analyze Handwriting (Graphology):

Step 1. Look at the pressure of the strokes. A high pressure means the person has high emotional energy. People with high emotional energy have a lot of enthusiasm for life and are often very successful. People with a low emotional energy find most situations draining and will try to avoid them.

OK. I can make a clue out of this. His moniker, written with a burst of energy, appears to have no pressure. That fits. All these interwoven lines might be tracing the path of protons gone wild, but they orbit a central nucleus of dog-like acceptance of the world. That’s so him.

Step 2. Look at the size of the letters. Large letters mean the person is outgoing and extroverted; small letters mean the person is reclusive and introverted.

OK, there are no letters here, but there is a sizeable conglomeration of formless strokes. Extroverted it is. Check.

Step 3. Look at the slant of the strokes. A right slant means the person is assertive and confident. A left slant means the person is quiet and reclusive. No slant means the person is reliable and consistent, but reserved and constrained.

Hmmm … Here we have a right slant and a left slant combined with a no slant at all. So he appears to be an assertive and confident recluse who is reliable. Yes. Yes. I’ve seen it over the years.

Step 4. Look at the connection of the letters. Connected letters mean that the person is logical and judges things according to experience. Disconnected letters mean the person is imaginative and judges things according to intuition.

Again, we are wanting letters, but his doodling, squiggle-ish, complex flourish does appear to be formed by one continuous line. Therefore, according to this preeminent authority, we can conclude that I married one logical guy with a crazy signature.

By the way, I did a quick review of my own lilting, left-leaning mark and found that I am an enthusiastic and outgoing person who confidently asserts her intuition.

Now why would I need to forge his signature?

Carolyn Plath, M.Ed., is a Benicia resident and retired high school principal. Read her blog at thinkdreamplay.blogspot.com.