Somewhere out there is an office whose only job is to confirm that you exist, and it does not believe you. You have a birth certificate, a driver's license, a passport, and a face. The office requires one more document, and it is always the one you did not bring.
The adventure begins with a form. The form asks for information that the same agency already has, in a database, on the same computer the clerk is typing on. Your name. Your address. Your date of birth, which, last time anyone checked, has not changed since the original event. You write it all down in pen, in block letters, like it is 1974 and computers are a rumor.
Make one mistake and the ritual demands a fresh form, because crossing something out apparently voids the entire document's will to live. Run out of room in the tiny boxes and you discover the secret second form: the continuation sheet, which references the first form, which references a third form that no one has seen since the Clinton administration.
Then comes the photo specification, a genre of literature unto itself. Your photo must be two inches by two inches, taken within six months, against a white background, not the off-white background in your photo, which the clerk can tell is different using senses the rest of us do not have.
My favorite part is the line. Not the waiting — the line itself, with its numbered ticket, moving at the speed of continental drift. You will watch a number system skip from 42 to 87 for reasons never explained. When your number is finally called, the clerk will inform you that your particular problem is handled at a different window, in a different building, on different days, one of which was yesterday.
And here is the punchline that never fails: after the forms, the copies, the fees, and the stamps, you will be handed a receipt and told the whole thing can also be done online. Online. The website is down for maintenance. It has been down since the forms were printed.
Bring a pen, bring copies, bring a snack. And patience — you will need paperwork for that too. That sucks.