And This is Why We’d Rather Not Bother

Dearest Rachel –

Since these letters usually go out in the morning, when all I’ve been able to take care of is my morning routine before heading out to the ‘office,’ I often make reference to things that I have coming up, and then put the brakes on going into detail about them, because I’d rather tell you about the process – and in some cases, show you the finished result – once it’s properly completed. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out such that what I’m planning to do in a given day finishes the process; what ought to take a few minutes or hours ends up being delayed by days, weeks, months or even years.

You can probably guess that this morning’s story – about yesterday’s activity – is going to be one such tale. And you’d be right.

I hate to have to admit this, but we’d falling behind on some of Daniel’s identification papers. Granted, this responsibility should normally fall squarely upon him – he is, after all, a grown man, even if he still presents himself as a seventeen-year-old kid (which I dare say, must come from your side of the family) – but as he’s not ‘the man of the house,’ I probably still bear as much responsibility for ensuring that his ducks are all in a row, bureaucratically speaking. After all, my entire profession has to do with verifying that i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, financially speaking; as much as I feel like he ought to be taking care of his own affairs as much as possible, I should also be applying my own strengths to assist him in matters where he isn’t necessarily as capable as I am.

Since this matter has to do with identification, he has to get it taken care of in person, of course; I can’t just vouch for him and have the powers that be say “oh, you’re his father? Well, all right then, here’s his updated documentation, no questions asked.” If nothing else, the document we’re trying to get updated includes a photograph; and let’s face it, he may be my one blood relative that I know of on the planet, but no one would mistake him for me or vice versa. I can’t stand in for him, even if I wanted to.

We’d actually gone to the local branch to have this taken care of some time ago, but upon arriving, the officer directing pedestrian traffic among the various stations throughout the office greeted us with “do you have an appointment?” which took me by surprise. The last time I’d gone to update my own information, the place operated on a reasonably ‘walk-in’ basis. Then again, the last few times I’ve had to renew it, I’ve been offered the option to do so online, since I had a perfectly clean record. To be sure, Daniel’s record is fairly clean as well, but we both concluded that his lapsed status would pose more of an issue, and agreed that an in-person visit would be a good idea. But neither of us thought to consider that we would need to make reservations to do so.

Then again, given the place’s universal reputation, the idea of having an appointment actually makes sense. At the same time, it wasn’t pleasant that first time we discovered that it would be necessary.

At this point, I decided to leave it up to Daniel to make the appointment, which was probably a mistake, as no reservation was made for a while. To be sure, it’s not as if he needs this form of identification all that often; he does have other forms that work perfectly well much of the time. But this did apply to a certain set of circumstances, and would be more necessary going forward. Moreover, once my parents got wind of the situation, they leaned a little heavily on him to make the appropriate arrangements.

And so, he finally got on the stick, and set up an appointment for yesterday for me to drive him over to the state office to get this matter settled once and for all. But now that we were at the main desk, we were asked for additional forms of identification, which he hadn’t thought to bring along. Now, I could have sworn I asked him about his passport when he got in the car, but it didn’t cross my mind to inquire about his Social Security card. You just don’t carry that around with you these days, any more than you give the number out to anyone who asks for it. It never occurred to me that it would be necessary to bring that physical document. So our appointment was an absolute bust.

Worse yet, while going through our lockbox at home, I found my card, and yours, but not his (I did find his birth certificate, though, so that’s something; we may need to bring that next time around). Upon contacting the Social Security office in our area, he discovered he would need to go there in person as well to get a new card – and make an appointment to do so, as well. The nearest date he could get? Some time in the first week of May.

And this is why we’d rather not bother; I had hoped to be able to tell you “that’s what we were doing yesterday, but at least that’s sorted out,” we have to tell you to check in with us in a month or so. Sometimes, the aggravation involved in jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops make if feel like, as the saying goes, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. For what little use he puts to this piece of identification, this is a lot of trouble to go through. I’m not saying we aren’t going to do it, but I really hope that the powers that be will go easy on us in the meantime; at least, they have to give us credit for trying.

So while we wait to get this all sorted out, I’ll ask you, as usual, to keep an eye on us, and wish us luck, as we’re going to need it.