By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

mpound@joplinglobe.com

After an hour of frantic searching this morning, I finally found our tax records from 1991, which is too bad, really, because I wasn’t looking for them.

What I was looking for was my birth certificate.

Some of you may be thinking that it’s silly for somebody to keep 17-year-old tax records but not keep his birth certificate. But some of you who are thinking that don’t know my wife.

My wife has some sort of mental disease that makes her incapable of throwing anything away — unless it’s something I need.

On Friday morning, in addition to finding old tax records, I also found old canceled checks, bank statements, receipts, warranty information for appliances that we haven’t used in 20 years, and a cat.

The good news is now, after 10 years, we know what happened to Fluffy.

The reason I was looking for my birth certificate was because the federal government, in an effort to crack down on terrorists, requires all American citizens to be inconvenienced. What the federal government figured it would do is require anyone wishing to renew their driver’s license to produce their birth certificate in order to prove to the driver’s license people that they were, in fact, born.

Really, what the feds want to do is make sure terrorists don’t sneak into this country and immediately march down to the motor vehicle department and get a driver’s license.

Now, I don’t want to tell the federal government what to do but it seems to me that if someone wanted to protect this country, the best thing you could do would be to encourage the terrorists to go to their local motor vehicle department.

“No, I’m sorry Mr. bin Laden, you need to have both your car title and your proof of inspection.”

“AIIIIIIEEEEEEEE! I Surrender.”

After spending an hour looking for my birth certificate, I decided to call our local motor vehicle people. When I explained my problem to the nice lady on the phone, she told me that I could apply for a temporary license extension while I looked for, or ordered, a new birth certificate. So I drove down to the motor vehicle department. When I got there, Debbie, who runs the place, looked up a phone number and Web site so I could order a new birth certificate.