John Hancock Explains His Big Signature

Its a Sunday. The last day of June. The year is, somehow, halfway through. The entire McSweeneys store is on sale for one more day. Regardless of how you might feel about it, the birthday of the nation from which this email originates is merely days away. What better time to relax, take a big sip of your preferred morning beverage, and enjoy a laugh or two, courtesy of the McSweeneys Internet Tendency archives?

In addition to publishing your favorite form-breaking fiction and nonfiction in elegantly designed books and magazines, McSweeneys publishes daily humor online almost every day.

Yes, you read that right, our entire store is up to 60% off through the end of the day. What are you waiting for? Shop your worries away.

JOHN HANCOCK EXPLAINS HIS BIG SIGNATURE

by MATT STOFSKY

Dear Fellow Signers of the Declaration of Independence:

Now that our noble document is complete, it is time to address the elephant in the room: my name is much bigger than everyone elses. Ill be the first to admit that it is absolutely massive. Yet I must also speak this self-evident truth: it is not entirely my fault.

The fact is I thought we were all doing big signatures. Thats what I was told. Do none of you remember Thomas Jeffersonhopped up on parchment fumes and cheap barleywinerunning around telling everyone our sigs had to be freakin huge? Then I go first, and everybody bursts out laughing like I did something foolish.

I hereby call on my brethren of the Second Continental Congressthose who I know to be defenders of liberty, progress, and the values of the Enlightenment, to which we are all fan-boyishly devoted for some reasonto publicly stand up and say everybody told John Hancock we were doing big sigs.

Of latein taverns and shops, on the streets, and in drawing roomsI have overheard people asking one another for their John Hancocks. Like thats just a thing now? I do not want my name to be a thing. Do you want your names to be things, my Founding Brothers-in-Arms? I say to you, Pat Henryremember that night you, me, and Sammy Adams got totally wasted? Do you want staggering into the town square and defiling the steps of the courthouse henceforth to be known as Patrick Henrying? I thought not.