Number 75

Dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles can coax violence out of the most docile creature—we all know that. But until you have spent time in the local Social Security Office, it might be wise to refrain from any DMV diatribes.

Let me back up for a minute.

Having been a teacher all my life, and having been part of a discrete retirement plan, I never had any real use for Social Security. In fact, when Bush claimed that the system was in trouble, I didn't worry. I'm not insensitive. Actually I care very much for the millions who will depend upon Social Security in the decades to come, but I also know that Bush seldom knows what he's talking about and that this is merely another example. But even I had earned some Social Security income over the years, and so last April—now old enough to collect my nearly $100.00 a month!—I traipsed down to my local office.

To claim that the building is situated in a depressed part of New Britain, Connecticut, is redundant. Basically every part of New Britain, Connecticut, is depressed, as are the people who live there and many of their pets. This particular building is fairly new, having been built well after the Civil War and boasting, among other modern contrivances, a multi-directional elevator. (It goes up as well as down.) On the ground floor are the Social Security offices and their waiting room.

Admittedly not much can be done to pretty up a waiting room. Some places have a TV in a corner and it plays all day, but if you're one of those 200-channel cable/dish subscribers who complain there's never anything on, there's less in those places. So this waiting room had been stripped down of everything except a few signs—in Spanish and English—telling visitors to take a number and wait to be called. It's like a deli with no reward—no pastrami, no thin-sliced ham, no provolone or mushroom caps, nothing. I was number 75. Number 68 was being served. Number 69 took ten minutes. Only one window was accepting customers. It was not pretty.

Worse, this was my second trip there to resolve the same issue. On my first one the clerk, a very pleasant young woman who seemed to do everything right, asked to see my social security card, then responded with horror when I showed it to her.

"This is laminated," she said.

"Yes."

"When did you laminate it?"

"1973, near as I can remember."

"It's illegal to laminate a social security card," she said and politely confiscated it.

Considering the alternative—my waning years rotting away in a federal prison—I was glad to relinquish it. Anyone will tell you, rotting away at home is easier: the food is better, the clothing is more varied, and the operating system updates arrive regularly to make you feel current. In prison I'll bet they never heard of OS-X.

"We'll issue you another card," she said, handing me a form. "Fill this out."

And so I did, breezing through most of the answers with alacrity until I came to the blank where I was to insert my father's Social Security number. My father died in 1986, not that long after I laminated the card. He never was much of a talker, my dad, but even though we suffered some silent moments whenever we interacted, never were those moments so silent that he deemed it necessary to say, "Son, have I ever told you my Social Security number?"

I stopped and said to the clerk, "I'm afraid I don't know the answer to this." She looked at it and smiled. "Oh we don't need that." Rather than ask what I wanted to ask—then why is it here?—I nodded, and continued, and when I got to the blank for my mother's SSN (that's what they call it down there in bureaucraville) I never even slowed down, just left it blank. When I was finished with all the forms and had retrieved my documents of identity, I left with a letter proving I had been there and implying that I, like Arlo Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant," had rehabilitated myself and would never laminate a government document again, especially the new card that would be arriving in two weeks.

It didn't arrive. Not in two weeks, or three, or four. Thus the second trip and the second wait. Now I have in my possession a second letter proving that I was there and applied for a replacement card. And I am confident that this one will do the trick; otherwise...and I mean this damn it!...I'll...uh... probably go back again. And take a number.