Thirtysomething

All of Me

I spent some time yesterday afternoon at the Social Security Office, otherwise known as the inner depths of hell. There's a U.S. Marshall, who they use as a receptionist to give out numbers to people waiting for service and he looks like he's ready to DIE from boredom. At the very least, he's probably reflecting on what exactly he did wrong to deserve such an assignment. As an aside, it's interesting that the person distributing numbers needs to be a law enforcement officer carrying a semi-automatic weapon. As you might expect, there's an interesting collection of people waiting in the Social Security Office and I was probably the only person there because of a name change due to marriage.

Actually, that's not true. There was one couple trying to get the woman's name changed, but they weren't yet married. They seemed surprised that you actually needed to be married and have a certified marriage license to change your name because you got married.

I spent the first couple of minutes looking at my form, convinced that they weren't going to let me change my last name to two last names without a hyphen. I resolved if that was the case I would just go with the married last name, even though the thought of losing my maiden name entirely made me feel like I was abandoning some part of myself on the street. But then I became totally distracted by a young woman who had the shinest red hair I had ever seen. And it was a red I've never, ever seen before. Certainly not in nature anyway, but it wasn't one of those purplish reds or fire engine reds. This was...well, it was actually orange. Almost like neon orange. It seemed to radiate. Only it didn't seem dyed. I think it was actually her natural color.

It'll be a couple of weeks until I get a card reflecting this, but officially, the new version of my name is : FirstName MiddleInitial MaidenName MarriedName. No hyphen. I walked out seeing my name, my whole name printed out on my receipt and I felt a strange sense of relief. I managed to keep my middle initial--which I wanted to do, since I was given my middle name for both my grandmothers--plus have two last names. It'll be a bitch to sign, but I'll only need to sign legal documents that way. And I think because of the lack of hyphen, I can actually just move to signing my married last name when I'm ready.

It's really not so important what people call me, or what they put on envelopes addressed to me. I really don't care about all that. I just wanted that little card to reflect all of me, with all of my many names.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 8:30 AM