May 02, 2008 06:12 pm
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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.
I was happy. I figured I would spend five minutes on the Internet filling out a form and I would have myself a new birth certificate. Of course, I’m also a moron.
The first problem I encountered was when the computer asked me for the name of the town and county where I was born. See, I was born at a naval hospital near Chicago. The problem was, although I knew the name of the hospital, I didn’t know the name of the town where it was located or the name of the county.
So I dialed up the Great Lakes Naval Hospital Web page. Twenty minutes later I still had no idea of the name of the town or county that the hospital was in. So I called the naval station. Thirty minutes later I was finally able to talk to a human. It was Donald Rumsfeld.
Seriously, a nice lady told me that the Great Lakes Naval Hospital was located in ... wait for it ... Great Lakes, Ill. She also said the name of the county the hospital was in was ... wait for it ... Lake County.
I was sort of mad at myself.
Then I went back to my computer and started to fill out the birth certificate order form. Of course, when I tried to type in my date of birth the order form wouldn’t accept it. So I tried again. And again. And again. And again. Then I tried swearing. That didn’t help. Then I tried to enter the date again. This time it worked.
I finished filling out the form and then I answered a few questions that the birth certificate people asked for security reasons:
“You’re not a terrorist, are you?”
In a few minutes I was almost done. There was only one more thing the birth certificate people needed from me.
A copy of our tax records from 1991.
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