the name game

8/2/99

Got up early and went to the base with John. Waited a lot.

Sat for 1 ½ hours in the ID place. I’ll never complain about the Secretary of State again. More and more people, all waiting while one airman worked with the same couple for over an hour. Turned out it was that guy’s first day. Finally, another person started taking people, but she had to stop every other minute to help the first guy. All the employees seemed so calm. It wasn’t like a complaining, impatient crowd was unusal to them—just a typical day in military admin.

I was forced to choose my last name, on the spot. Chose mine. Little did I know that it would be so much more difficult that way.

Where I came from, women keep their names, or at most they hyphenate. Any of my friends could tell you that I was likely to keep my own name. It’s apparently quite unusual down here. John’s friends don’t even call me Betsy, they just call me Mrs. C. I don’t mind; they’ll either catch on or they won’t, and it didn’t seem like a big deal. But all of the clerks who helped me today assumed that I’d change it, and entered me into their files that way without asking. All of my friends will tell you that not asking the surest way to get me to do the opposite of whatever you’ve done. We did a lot of re-printing today.

The worst was when I went to the credit union. So many problems. John wasn’t there to sign the papers for the joint account. I don’t have a job yet. My license is from Michigan. And the checks.

There’s a 31 dollar minimum to open a savings and a checking account. I carried with me one check, for $20, made out to Betsy Jones, and two checks for $200 each made out to John and Betsy C. Not only does John have to sign both checks, but the name on my account, Elizabeth Jones, doesn’t appear anywhere on these checks. The only one I could convince them to take was the $20. I had $10 in cash. I fell a fucking dollar short.

Eventually the woman there took pity on me and let me open an account with a missing dollar. Then she told me that it would be no problem at all to change the name on the account once I had my official paperwork with my new name. Thanks, babe.

My temp agency didn’t find me a job after two days so I registered with another one. Aren’t I just a model of patience? I made an appointment to take some tests and things at a big bad insurance company tomorrow. One of these days a job will just fall into my lap.