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Celia Rivenbark
Wilmington Newspapers
P.O. Box 840
Wilmington NC 28402
Dear Ms. Rivenbark,
I believe that your column represents the most positive sort of short comedic writing. Your consistent message is, "Look around the world you live in, and you will find something to laugh at, and this is a nice thing about Life." Because you have publicly identified yourself with this message, I thought you might enjoy hearing about one more ludicrous encounter with bureaucracy. I will share this experience with all the accuracy and pith that are comfortable to me within the Southern yarnspinner tradition.
When I was younger, I had a bad habit of losing cars at the end of relationships. I do not drive now, and have not been divorced once since becoming a pedestrian. I long ago put my expired driver's license through the wash, adding my social security card for good measure. Thanks to bank machines and a certain degree of local notoriety from musical performances and occasional journalistic endeavors for Encore, I long ago became well known enough to suffer little inconvenience from not having carrying acceptable identification. Planning a trip to the DC area to visit my young daughter earlier this month, however, I decided that valid identification would be necessary at National Airport. I called DMV and asked what documentation would be acceptable for issuance of an NC I.D.. card, and the first two items they mentioned that I had in my files were a birth certificate and a W-2 form, which I gathered up early one morning last week before taking an early morning bus to a DMV office.
At the end of a short line of derelicts, I entered the DMV office at 8am sharp and waited patiently until 8:15, when their computers came up. Innocently, I proceeded to a counter where I learned that my birth certificate, issued to Arthur F. Shuey, III and my W-2 form, issued to Arthur F. Shuey, did not match and would not permit the issuance of a pictured I.D.. Explaining that it was inappropriate to use the "III" after the demise of one's father and grandfather fazed the staff not at all, nor did my offer of an old pictured student I.D.. complete with social security number.
With the documentation I had, I couldn't get an I.D.. for either Arthur F. Shuey, III or Arthur F. Shuey, but could, the DMV clerk suggested, go to the New Hanover County Office of Vital Records and change my name, obtain a form so stating, and return to acquire what I wanted. The live entertainment offered on the bus downtown was none too exciting, possibly because the diesel fumes made it difficult for several adult passengers to beat their children as vigorously as they wished and for the children to scream at full potential.
I want to commend New Hanover County employees for understanding my situation immediately and putting sincere effort into trying to be helpful. However, there was a piece missing from the bureaucratic jigsaw puzzle I requested from them, too, and they directed me to the Social Security Administration, where I could get a form #2478 stating that a replacement soc. sec. card had been requested. With that form and the papers I already had, the County could change my name to my name to the satisfaction of DMV.
Despite the awesome resources available to the federal government, the Social Security Administration's entertainment offering could not compete with that of the city bus. During the hour I waited for my number to be called, I could only watch Oprah Winfrey and her audience cheer and support transvestites and the women who love them until they stretch out all of their nice skirts. Finally reaching the counter, I was ably assisted by a clerk who used my health insurance card and old student I.D.. to generate a form #2878, which just last year replaced #2478 as notice that a replacement soc. sec. card has been requested.
Since #2878 is new and unfamiliar to County staff, they could not accept it. I regret everything that I've ever done in anger and dared not spend any more time in government offices that day, besides which I was already two hours late for work, and so I got on another bus headed toward my office. The floor show hadn't started on this route yet, so I had only the diesel fumes to keep me company. They helped me figure out that a simple solution to my problem would be to just ask the office bookkeeper for another W-2 form, this one for Arthur F. Shuey, III. Well, it sounded simple to me, but not to the office computer, which had no intention of issuing a W-2 to someone it didn't recognize, and so I asked the bookkeeper for a blank W-2 form, which I rolled into an old IBM Selectric and filled out.
With the new W-2 form, my birth certificate, six Star-News and Encore articles complete with my photo and captioned name, health insurance cards, Soc. Sec. Admin. #2878 and an ivory toothpick, I returned to the DMV office the next morning, easily satisfied the oh-so-numbers conscious staff, and was issued the finest, most official NC DMV pictured identification $10.00 could buy, marred only in the tiniest respect. The goddam thing lists my height as 7' 2" instead of 6'2," a wee typo that I am sorely tempted to use as a lever with which to send the DMV clerks even closer to Hell than they are already, with those mountains of paper and awful uniforms.
However, as tempting as that prospect is, it would require that I go back into that office, and you couldn't get me to do that with a ball peen hammer.
Yrs,