Writing on the palm

It was so common when I was in school. I remember the days when some damn red coloured dot on the hand was called as "Jolly". The game was called as Jolly-Jolly and participants in that game had to have that dot on their palms whenever they met, failing which they would get either ten shots on their back(pun not intended at all) or a plate of batata vada from our famous IES canteen. Not that I enjoyed that game, but nevertheless I played along with a select few who would not beat me hard when I forgot to tatoo my hand with the ball pen ink. Though this game was played primararily when I was in primary, but it didnt mean that writing on the palm stopped when I went to the fifth standard. Big boys, bigger games. Somehow I was infatuated with the Nazi Swastik(and some weird signs like that) and used to draw it on the forearms to make sure everyone sees it. Somehow, like everyone else, I loved attention too. And yes, how can I forget practicing my signature....many times on the paper and a few times on the palm. Must have practiced atleast a thousand times before I got the 'perfect' one. (do you ICICI Bank guys know what efforts I have taken just to practice the signature I have on your forms)
I dont remember when things changed. I dont remember when I started hating writing on the palms. Probably when I was no longer a innocent kid, I realised that writing on the palm was 'bad'. Was this after some elder in the family told me to get rid of this habit? Or was it after my brief stint with the leaking ink pens. Probably because of the leaking pens, I guess. They really made my hands look ugly and that must have been when I must have realised that unwritten palms are cleam palms. And yes, I stopped using ink pens while I was in school and this tempts me to conclude that I stopped writing on my palms when I was in my last years of my school. Probably the last time I did it must be while jotting someones phone number. But soon hated the habit of jotting phone numbers on palms after I realised that these phone numbers are always soaped away.
Today when I was in the gridlab and was talking to the CCD(computers and communication dept) guy on the phone which was a good ten feet away from my AIX machine, I had to write on my palm-- not the jolly sign or the Nazi swastik, but the MAC address of the machine.