The ripple effect

OK, yesterday we got a Certificate of Live Birth from the state of Vermont for our 3 week old daughter. Both her first and last name were wrong AND they spelled my name wrong. Normally you might give a little benefit of the doubt but ... I do not wonder if I spelled my daughter's name wrong, I did not spell my name wrong. Which means that someone else looked at the form that we filled out CLEARLY at the hospital and made 3, three! errors applying for a legal document. So we call and are told that we need to go to Town Hall to fix it. I do this and while I am there wearing my ski helmet with goggles (I rode my bike) I am told that I might have to go to Probate Court to get the name changed. I am pleasant and understanding but looming inside is the subtext body language "there is no way that I am going to go to Probate Court cuz some lazy desk jockey in the hospital can't read." Everyone is pleasant, everyone fortunately gets it: that we didn't cause this and we have to now deal with it. I was ready to start asking questions about the process "so who sent you this information?" etc. so I could track it back to the source. The invisible trail. Noone wants to own up with a stupid little error like this. Noone. Not a big deal as deals go BUT life is full of these goddamn picayune little details and after a while you wish that people just did their jobs like you do yours. So as it turns out the City Clerks office dealt with and the next day we got a corrected Certificate of Live Birth. Whew. This tale reminds me of a story:

Couple on vacation in Coastal Georgia are walking down the beach. This beach is not easy to reach so noone has picked the beach clean of all the shells etc. There had been a small storm and hundreds of live sand dollars had been washed up past the high tide line. Couples not getting along well for various reasons one of which is she won't let him collect the live sand dollars and there are not many dead sand dollars to collect on this beach. (live sand dollars are a very pale green and have many small hairs on the underside, dead sand dollars are smooth and typically white from being bleached in the sun) So he is a little pissed that he can't just fill up on sand dollars. So as they walk down the beach she is picking up the live sand dollars and tossing them like a frisbee toward the water do they don't dry out and die in the hot Georgia sun. The beach is long and he is not helping. He says in a frustrated tone "Jesus Mary and Joseph honey there are hundreds of them along this beach your throwing a few back in the water isn't going to make a difference." She looks at the sand dollar in her right hand before zinging it back into the surf "Made a difference to that one."

I love that story.

Anyway, today we got our 3 week old daughter's Social Security Card and guess what? ... That's right! First and last name are both wrong. Not a big deal right? Didn't have to go to Probate Court after all. Social Security card name change should be easy right. Don't count on it. What a pain in the ass. So now I have made a special trip into Burlington to get the Birth Certificate fixed and her mother has made a trip to Social Security in Burlington because some joker in the hospital didn't pay enough attention to details. So what might have taken them 30 seconds of proofreading requires hours of fix-it time on our end. GRRRRRRR. Nuf Said.