Never Act in Undue Haste

For those of you keenly interested in whether or not I had to expose my chest to the Polizia (see previous post), read on...

On Monday, I arrived at the Questura at the appointed time.

A very robust looking police woman took my resident permit paperwork and my (spotty) photos, then gave me a form and directed me to their 'criminal scientific lab'.

I followed their directions, which involved walking through a door to a bright light which I soon realised was outside. I then had to walk across an internal quadrangle to a yellow door. When I entered the yellow door, I found men in white coats peering into microscopes.

I wondered about their expectations. Did they have serious concerns about my spots? Would they attempt a blood test? Or even a biopsy?

One of the men came to take my paperwork.

He looked carefully at me. I was tempted to expose my chest immediately but I resisted.

He checked my height and my hair colour (under his interrogation, I confirmed that the colour was natural...why would anyone PAY to get the combination of brown and grey that I have!?)

Then he checked my eye colour. Blue I had said. He leaned forward and looked deeply into them as if he'd never seen blue eyes before. Or was it that he was assessing me with some new lie-detector test? I felt sure that my spots had been noted and that my honesty was being tested. Was now the right time to expose?

Then he pulled on surgical rubber gloves! I panicked. This was it. My fingers were already undoing my buttons when he took one of my hands in his.

One by one he pressed each of my fingertips onto the screen of a scanner. I was being fingerprinted!

He made fingerprints of every finger of both hands, then a 'group' portrait of all of the fingers of each hand, then another 'group' portrait of the palms of each hand!

Then he smiled and explained that my residents permit would be posted to the Canelli Comune and that I could collect it in approximately 1 month.

I left, relieved that I had not acted in undue haste and stood partly naked before an innocent fingerprinter.