Thursday, April 07, 2011

Birther ... me?

I turned 66 in February. I applied for Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, and formally announced my retirement (effective ... not soon enough!). This is old news.

What I haven't mentioned is that my drivers license expired, so I had to go to the DMV and apply for a renewal.

The last time that happened, it was a hassle because they had this vision test, which took about 10 minutes ... and there was a long line of people waiting to fulfill this requirement, so it was a huge bottleneck in the process.

This time, they had changed the vision test something which looks very much like what my optometrist gave me. It also included a glance to check peripheral vision.

It still took me a month to get my permanent license, because I had to produce my birth certificate to prove that I was a natural born citizen.

Before I had to produce it, I would have sworn that it was safely locked in my home filing cabinet, along with my car titles and other important documents. Big surprise ... I looked for it there for days, and could not find it. Ultimately, I had to apply for a "Registered Copy" from my state .... something-or-other office. I was required to provide all my my birth information, parents' names, etc., and also send them copies of documents which provide that my SSN was assigned to me, and that the home address I gave them was my true current address. It took me some time to gather all of the materials. (I could have just sent them a copy of my current drivers license but they would not accept an expired drivers license; by that time, the license was expired.)

The process took several days, and what with fees for processing, and shipping my new hard-copy birth certificate, cost me about $60 "out of pocket".

There's a warning here for anyone else getting ready to retire, or to renew his/her drivers license; start early, and KNOW what documentation you need.

And there's a thought here, too: I wonder what's going to happen when President Obama has to renew his driver's license?

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