Possumblog

Here’s yer snouts and gristle!

AS YOU ALL RECALL, yesterday was brewing into a perfect storm of enmity and ill-will betwixt myself and the civilized world, which is bad. Although somewhat entertaining.

ANYway, as I was sitting at the county health department, Miss Reba was being detained unnecessarily at work by evil forces, and was only able to break free at 12:15. She had to be at Shades Valley High in Irondale at 12:30 to pick up Ashley from driver’s ed. class.

This is a distance of approximately 13.8 miles from her office.

To be driven during the middle of the day.

Across the downtown stretch of Interstates notorious for nonsensical multi-vehicle pileups.

In order to make this jaunt in the proscribed time of fifteen minutes, it would require an average velocity of 55.2 miles per hour. Obviously, nowhere near the average speed of urban Interstate traffic here in the ‘Ham, and with the added inconvenience of several entrance and exit ramps and surface streets that had to be contended with at each end of the trip.

She made it exactly at 12:30. I imagine it was quite a ride.

So, she’s there at the school, but not seen by Oldest, who made the first of several calls to my empty desk to attempt to find out what was going on. Luckily, she finally saw Mom, and the two of them were then on their way to the satellite courthouse facility in Center Point to attempt to take the learner’s license test.

“Attempt” being the operative word.

They arrived and proceeded to attempt to negotiate the lackadaisical, unmotivated shoals of supreme bureaucratic diffidence.

Before I go any further, I would like to categorically state that the persons associated with the Alabama Department of Public Safety who administer testing and process paperwork at the Center Point satellite courthouse are quite possibly the most useless human beings in the entire world. And you may quote me freely. And ladies, whoever your boss is deserves to be fired exactly three seconds before you. Whoever you people are, you’re the ones who not only give hard-working civil servants a bad name, you also give stupid people, women people, fat people, and indeed, all of humankind, a bad name. There.

Reba showed the woman at the counter Ashley’s birth certificate, and her grade report. “Nah--you needs a Social Security card, too.” Reba explained to her that we hadn’t been able to find the card, and that she had two (of the required two) forms of identification that she was supposed to have--at least according to the stuff we read on the website. “Nah, you needs a Social Security card, too.” Reba asked her if the other stuff was okay, and after a careful examination of the certificate and grade report (which has her picture on it, by the way), she seemed satisfied.

From Center Point then to home, during which Ashley made the second call I missed, to let me know what was going on.

IN A STUNNING DISCOVERY, after Reba went through all the paperwork I had ALREADY searched through--guess what?

That RIGHT!

She FOUND Ashley’s Social Security card!

It was in a big yellow envelope, unmarked, with a bunch of other stuff. INCLUDING THE MISSING COPY OF JONATHAN’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE. What I had in bitter jest speculated about yesterday regarding their co-located status, turned out to be TRUE!

Amazing, I know.

AND, unbeknownst to me, this discovery made my nearly two-hour jaunt to the bowels of the health department entirely unnecessary, superfluous, redundant, and unessential. ::sigh::

WELL, then, on back to Center Point with them.

Arriving, they found that the staff were no longer giving out any numbers to take the test, due to a purported break in communications with Montgomery. Apparently the same one that struck the health department while I was there waiting. Reba, because she is very smart, knew it was futile to try to discuss this with the staff, who were much more worried about getting off on time--AT THREE P.M.--than they were about making sure people got served. So, just to make sure we had all the right stuff so Ashley could go back TODAY and try to take the test, she ONCE MORE got the woman to come over and verify she had all the necessary paperwork.

“I found her card, and we have her birth certificate, and her last report card.”

“Nah, we don’t take no port cards anymore. We did once, but we got to has the ficial rollment form from where she go to school.”

“But I was just in here an hour ago, and you said everything I had was okay!”

“Nah, we don’t take no port cards.”

Reba called the school, and found out the secretary had left for the day. SO, what had to happen THIS MORNING was--

I had to go to my early meeting, so I left the house at 6:20.

Reba took Ashley to Shades Valley before 7:30.

Reba then turned around and dropped the other three kids off at Grandma’s back in Trussville.

Reba THEN went to school to get the ficial rollment form from school, THEN went to work, arriving at 9:15.

I will now leave here, and go get Ashley from Shades Valley before 12:30.

I will then go BACK to Birmingham and drop by Reba’s office and pick up birth certificate, Social Security card, and ficial rollment form.

THEN, I will take Oldest to the Public Safety office over on Bankhead Highway, which is inhabited by an entirely different tribe of trolls, who I’m sure will have a completely different set of procedures. Not necessarily any better than the ones in Center Point, but different.

Then I will come back here, or take Oldest home, or something. I really don’t know.

Now, all this, and not only this, but--I found out last night I have been trapped in the middle of an ambush by an unhappy set of parents at church! Lots of simmering hurt feelings, all based upon something that was said to them about their child, and which was said without first warning me that something was going to be said to them about their child. BUT, it did deal with something over which I have some control, but not knowing what had transpired, I had tried to answer the parental questions-from-right-outta-left-field with what I thought was tact. Not the brutal honest truth (which I found out later would have been the preferred answer), but an answer was given that shaded and attempted to smooth over any unkindnesses.

But, rather than take the not-quite-direct answer as a sign that maybe I was trying to spare their feelings regarding their precious spawn, they took it to mean that what they had been told previously (which conversation I was NOT a party to) was ALL wrong--that there was NOTHING their sweet offspring had done.

Now as for me, if someone had said to me, several times, in several different ways, “well, you KNOW how kids can be sometimes,” I would have taken that as a cue that one of mine needed a little good old-fashioned Old Testamenting. And I would have offered extreme apologies for any trouble and embarrassment they might have caused. But, some people aren’t quite able to take that cue, it seems. And now, there will be all sorts of bright colorful explosions! I can hardly wait!

BUT, now I must hie to Irondale, and back, and forth.

I don’t know if I’ll get back to this today, so wish me luck!

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 8, 2005 12:09 PM