(no subject)

Today's visit to the Social Security Administration was my tenth attempt to get them to change my name. Why so long, you might ask. At first, in September, they denied that a man could change his name by getting married, and claimed that only women could. Then when I found documentation otherwise, they countered by saying that I needed to prove my last name was the one in their system, which turned out to be difficult since it had never been my legal name. They didn't believe my birth certificate, though, so they said they would need to check it with the Registry of Vital Statistics. They failed to find it. Twice. So I went to the RVS, where they found it in approximately 1 minute, after telling me that the SSA should never have questioned it anyway. But, in case things might have looked like reaching a real resolution, the SSA ignored the information I supplied from the RVS, with the wholly new argument that I couldn't change my name unless I could prove that I had the new name, in particular wishing to see proof that it was my father's. Again, difficult, since I can provide no proof of paternity. But then, perhaps that would have been obvious since there's no father on my birth certificate.

I tried going to the regional office, since I couldn't seem to get anywhere with my local branch. They were on the point of changing my name with nothing but the marriage certificate, when they noticed that the local office had put a lock on my file so that only they could change it. So back to them I went.

At last, I managed to get them to look at the information from the RVS, and they said they would look into it and call me back. But no, I got no information from them. So today, with little hope of success, I visited them yet again merely to find out what the status of my latest inquiry was. But I think I might have just begun to make some progress. The reason I suspect they might have processed it this time lies primarily in two points: first, they said "You're all set. You'll get your new card in 10 days." which although not absolute, is certainly suggestive. Second, they tore up 10 visits worth of files on my request, commenting "everyone in the office seems to know about you." I'll have to wait until my card is in hand to be truly convinced, but I have some hope now...