Saturday: A few weeks ago, I filled out the form to renew my passport, which expires in December. This will be my fourth passport since I got my first in the '80's in preparation for our trip to Venezuela in 1987 or '88. We'd only been married about two years, and Paul was a toddler. To get my first passport, I needed an original birth certificate, and I remember how Diana, who lived in Burlington at the time, was sweet enough to expedite the process by driving to P'burgh, an hour away, to obtain a copy from the County Clerk's office. In my 80's passport photo, I wore a red sweatshirt, large 80's glasses, and a frizzy, permed hairstyle.
My point in this story---and I do have one!---is about my name. As all you good readers know, when I married Liberto, I'd been married once or twice before, and had taken the different hubbies' names. When I married for the last time, I wanted to use my original name because, well, it just felt right. I won't get off on a tangent justifying my decision, but using my own name has worked for us, and Liberto even chuckles when mail comes addressed to Dr. E. and Mr. L. A----. But a little problem arose years ago when we moved from Louisiana to South Carolina for my first teaching job. My driver's license had had the name Eleanor S-----, the previous husband's last name. I arrived, if I remember right, with my divorce decree and my new marriage certificate. Remember, rural South Carolina is very, shall we say traditional, so the DMV clerk who was processing my new state license insisted, I mean insisted, that the name on my license had to be Eleanor C-----, Liberto's last name. Telling them that I didn't use that name didn't do any good. It was 4:55 p.m., they were about to close, baby Paul, age about two months, was screaming on my shoulder, and I one-handedly signed and surrendered to the name on my license, figuring I'd get it altered later. That didn't happen. With every new license renewal, I have told them I didn't use the C name and to change it to A, but they always insist I need an official name change form. There is no name change form category for "Always used own name," only categories for Marriage, Divorce, or Death. One helpful DMV worker even suggested that I should divorce L. and then remarry him so I could get the name the way I wanted. Another one said, "Honey, how will you collect his social security benefits if you don't have his name?" (Perhaps a legal marriage certificate??) I've brought other evidence to the DMV, including passport, credit cards, paychecks, and every legal document I could think of, but they were not accepted as substitutes for an official name change form. Even if there did exist a name change form for "Married but wants to go back to Original Name," what good would it do to request a name change to the name I've always used in the first place?
Okay, so I've always used E.A., except for my driver's license. Then, a few years ago, I received a letter from the state saying that my driver's license name had to match my social security card name. They were cracking down on terrorists, or something, and if I didn't get the two names coordinated, I could lose my license. The result was the new official last name A-C on those two documents, even though I still don't use that name.
When my passport came up for renewal, I knew the name conundrum would rear its head when I filled out the application. Nevertheless, I put my name as "E.A." since all my other passports say that, and I have not remarried or divorced since then. I got to the question on the form, "Have you been known by any other names? Attach additional sheets to explain, if necessary. Also attach court orders." Okay, so the Department of Homeland Security wanted to hear my story? Fine. What follows the letter I enclosed with my forms:
To Whom it May Concern:
Re: # 9-2 on passport application.
I have been married to L.C. for 23 years, but I have always used my original name, E.A. All my professional and financial paperwork has been in the name of E.A. However, 23 years ago, newly divorced from another man, when I got my driver’s license from the state of South Carolina, they insisted that I could not use “E.A.” and had to use “E.C. because I was newly married to L.C. They wouldn’t give me my license otherwise, so I went along with it. When I moved to the state of Georgia in 1989, the name already on my license was E.C., so that had to be carried over. I have never used the name C., but had to comply.
Two years ago, due to heightened security concerns statewide, the state of Georgia mandated that my social security card name, E.A., had to match my driver’s license name, E.C., so the DMV and the SS office agreed that A.-C. should be placed on both documents. This explains why I have a different name on the license and social card, but there is no court order to enclose [as you requested] nor a change in marital status [because there hasn't been one].
Over the years, I have wanted to get the name I actually use, "E.A." onto my driver’s license, but no one seems to know how that can be done. There are official name change forms for marriage, divorce, or death of spouse and everything else, but no form for “married woman who always used her own name.” I’ve actually had DMV workers suggest that I divorce my husband so I can use my own name, or that if I loved him enough I would take his name.
How does one “change” to a name that was always used in the first place?
There you have the background information on the a.k.a name.
Sincerely,
E.A., Ph.D.
I thought passports had a 10 month renewal backlog, so I was surprised to receive a package from the U.S. government last Monday, less than two weeks after sending the application.
I opened it up, and there, beside my own smiling face, was the name "E. A."
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Well, so much for Hurricane Hanna. On Friday, it was overcast, and a few drops of drizzle fell in late afternoon, but today is as sunny and clear as can be. Next is Hurricane Ike, which is forecast for western Florida.
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I've been wanting to talk about the discipline system at my new school and how efficient it is. The disciplinary referral forms are on-line. When you fill one out and click "Submit," it is automatically forwarded to the proper AP. It takes about 30seconds. Just walk to the nearest computer, and Bubba is written up. Within a few hours, sometimes sooner, you'll hear Bubba being paged to the front office. Then you'll get an email notification that Bubba has ISS beginning on Thursday and please put work in the ISS box. I think their system of bussing the ISS students away from the main campus is extremely smart. When they're bussed to another location, they can't hang with friends at lunch, or skip ISS and sneak into classes, they are really removed, which, to a teenager, is the worst form of torture.
At the previous school, the disciplinary referral process was a joke. They did not have an on-line system. The biggest challenge was simply getting a hard-copy write-up to the proper AP. We had to carry them personally. Whenever I found the time to bring the occasional discipline write-up to Mr. R., his office would be locked and dark. Wasted trip. To carry it to the front of the school, to his mailbox, was a major trek, for which I usually didn't have time nor the motivation since I knew nothing would ever be done anyway. Mr. R's desk always held a 12-inch stack of disciplinary referrals, half of which would never be processed because he didn't have the time. He spent most of his workday, walkie talkie in hand, rushing through the halls and stairways, yelling, "Hey, young man! Get back here!" or "Young lady, where are you going?" He was a tall, thin streak rushing back and forth in pursuit of errant students. In addition, he had to save the disciplinary process for the more hard core problems, such as fights and drugs, which had priority over skipping and disruption. In one case, I wrote up a girl who had left for the restroom and didn't come back to class. Skipping was supposed to be worthy of a disciplinary referral. A week later, nothing had happened to "D," the skipping girl, so I asked Mr. R. about it, and he hemmed and hawed, and finally said that it "wasn't a big enough deal to process," so he hadn't. Translate: he was too overworked processing expulsions.
At the old school, ISS was held on campus. On the same day a student started an ISS, the coach in charge would email the entire listserv with the list of names of ISS students for that day and a request "to send work now!!" Talk about short notice. Problem was, I sometimes didn't even see my email into after my three classes in a row were over, at 1:00, so my student would not have received any assignments. Or, even if I did see an email sometime in the morning, it was not always convenient in the middle of teaching a class to gather up something for Bubba to do and send another student to the other side of campus to deliver it.
At my new school, after processing the written up students quickly, the AP sends individualized emails to the teachers several days before their students' ISS's or OSS's, so we have time to collect assignments for them.
I'm starting a new Unit on Monday, which involves one of my favorite novels, The Count of Monte Cristo. I guess I've written long enough and should start to grade some quizzes.
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