Friday, September 7, 2018

Citizen of these United States?


I am trying to get a passport so we can go to Mexico sometime.  I sent in all the regular crap but I got a notice back in the middle of August saying my evidence of citizenship wasn't enough.  

I was born on September 13th, 1980.  At the time, my mother was under the spell of the neighborhood witch and this witch cursed me. This witch convinced my mother to have a home birth AND to not report anything to anyone official.  Great.  As a result, I am cursed.  I didn't get a birth certificate until I was a teenager.  So I actually have a "delayed certificate of birth".  Apparently, this is not sufficient evidence of my citizenship.  

Exciting.

Stupid witch.

So I get to try and jump through a lot of hoops to try and give the government more proof of my existence and hopefully citizenship.  I need to supply as many of the following as possible and they should be as close to by birth as possible:

Certificate of baptism
Early school records
A census report
Medical records
A signed affidavit from a witness to my birth

Let's just take all of these things one at a time, shall we?  The curse continues...

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We don't baptize our infants.  We wait until they are eight to baptize them...when they can hopefully decide for themselves if they want in on this church business.  So eight is not really close to birth.

School records, well my home school district purges their records every ten years and asks parents if they want the records before tossing them.  My mother has always declined.  

The census, I was born in September of 1980...the census from that year was taken between April and June!  So the first one I was counted on was 1990...I was ten.  

Medical records, my mother didn't take me to the doctors until we moved to Maine.  I think it was after school started when the district said we all had to be immunized.  So I am six or seven in my immunization record.  Not really close to birth.  It's like this witch super hated me and cursed me extra.

And the signed affidavit?  None of my family members were present at my birth.  My father was away helping with a service project.  My older siblings were not present.  I don't know who actually witnessed my birth.  Probably the neighborhood witch and she whispered that curse right as I took my first breath.  Stupid witch.

So far I have managed to find my immunization record, a report card from the 6th grade, my high school diploma, a census report from 1990 (did you know the living have to request and pay for census records...dead people can just get their records on the internet.  Stupid witch and her stupid curse.) and a signed affidavit from my oldest brother Chris.  He didn't witness the birth but was around me as a baby so here's hoping!  

It is crazy.

In all the searching I found a project I did in high school of a timeline of my life.  I got most of the years wrong but it was a good project.  I wish the passport would have accepted this as proof of my citizenship.  I got an A.





I also found a journal we had to keep for Senior year English.  I remember we were supposed to write in it every day and turn it in at the end of the week.  I would just make crap up about what was happening in the news.  Some of the entries are of actual stuff happening to me instead of world events.  I really appreciate all of the entries now.  It was fun to look back and read.  Check out this thoughtful entry about where I thought I wanted to live when I grew up.


Maybe I escaped the witch's curse after all?


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