Pens, Paperwork, and Psychotic Breaks

I didn’t have any pictures for this article, so here is the wire telephone I made one time (with a GI Joe for scale).

It’s no secret that a major percentage of adulthood is paperwork. I mean, there’s that final year of high school when it seems very important to many of the adults at the school that your entire class take the ASVAB. And it seems at the time that a significant part of this process is just finding out if you can fill out the header properly. Somehow it takes the first 25 minutes to get your name, the date, your student number, and the name of your high school in the proper order. Because if you get that wrong, they can never trust your answers to the question: “According to graphic 6. A., if cog A is rotated in a clockwise direction, in which direction will cog C rotate?”

I know it’s been, like, some years since then, but I have never forgotten that question. It is a real and unexaggerated example of how elementary that test is. My counselors actually made me take Math Analysis so I could answer THAT question.

Anyhoodle. So I don’t mind paperwork on principle. In fact, I do crossword puzzles for leisure. I don’t mind filling in small boxes in scrupulously legible print. Give me a good pen and I am a happy clam.

Tonight I had a huge stack of forms from my son’s school to fill out so I got my shoebox of good pens and a glass of wine and began.

You know what? I wish I was taking the ASVAB. I remember on that test they asked us to properly differentiate between a wrench and a screwdriver. No joke. But, you see, that is a DEFINITE TASK  with a DEFINITE ANSWER. Nothing is to be implied or inferred. It’s all very literal. That’s why I kicked butt on the ASVAB and the Air Force wouldn’t stop calling me.

That is the last time I was good at answering a question. I’m too literal. Now, for some unimaginable reason I regularly cause major misunderstandings when I have to fill out paperwork. I apparently caused a huge miscommunication when my son’s soccer team application asked for “Your email address”. I gave my son’s ZooBuh! email and not my own. When my husband found that out he looked at me like I’m insane, but he doesn’t even know HOW LONG I stared at that stupid application thinking: Are they asking for my email? That would imply that this is my application. Clearly, this is not my application. This is my son’s application, so when they say “your” they must mean him, right? Why would they assume that all fifth graders have email? But why else would they say “Your”?

Not kidding around, this stuff stresses me out.

Tonight I began filling out page one of, like, a million, by writing my name. Our address. Our home phone number. Easy stuff. Then it asks for “Highest Grade Completed”.

What, like a number? They need a number? What number? A Bachelor’s Degree is high school plus four. Assuming you got your degree in four years. Assuming the year of graduate classes doesn’t count. Honestly, should that be a 16th grade or a 17th grade? And nobody says either of those things, so that can’t be right at all!

I wrote “Bachelor’s Degree” and hoped they didn’t think I was trying to rebel against their sysem of calculation.

Next question: “Mother’s full name.” Okay. It’s a repeat, but okay. “Father’s full name.”All set. “Mother lives in child’s home?” Yes. “Father lives in child’s home?” Yes. “Child lives with (check one) Both parents? Mother only? Father only?”

Seriously?

I check “Both parents.”

“Names of adults child lives with.”

WHAT GAME ARE YOU PEOPLE PLAYING? I  ALREADY TOLD YOU BOTH THOSE THINGS.

But they aren’t kidding with this. Further on they need to know what anesthetic I had when I was in delivery. I want to say it was something like “Demarol” but I’m not totally sure how it’s spelled. I wrote “Demoral” and then I realized that says “de-moral” and I thought, “Well, that doesn’t look good at all,” but I had already written it down and if I scratch it out it will look tacky.

I’m sweating heavily. I don’t want the people judging my kid and thinking his mom is an idiot who can’t spell the names of pharmaceuticals and doesn’t know what 17th grade is.

They give a list of diseases. I’m supposed to write in the dates of the ones he has had. This leads to a long process of asking myself, “wait, how old was his brother that year? I’m pretty sure he was still in diapers. So, no older than two, but he could have been one.” Then they ask me to “describe” the illness.

Hey, these guys  do know they just wrote down all the names of the illnesses, right? When they printed “pneumonia” with a space to put a date next to it, they KNEW WHAT THE WORD “PNEUMONIA” MEANS, RIGHT?!

Describe it? He was coughing. He had a fever. IS THERE THAT MUCH ELSE TO IT?

This was all I could face of paperwork for the night. I can’t possibly imagine what they could ask me next because there is no limit to the personal questions they will ask and no limit to the idiocy they will employ to ask it. If they ask for pregnancy complications do I have to –yet again–explain the faulty position of my placenta? Do they really NEED to know about the placenta? Furthermore, whose placenta even was it? Was it mine? I grew it and it tore away from my uterus and I almost bled to death. But I guess we technically shared the uterus so maybe Placenta Previa applies as a medical condition my child suffered from, but I’m far from sure and I would like to know if anyone else finds these questions easy. THESE ARE HARD QUESTIONS.

Can I go back in time and just take the ASVAB and have people think I’m smart? Because when I bumble around the regular world I feel like I do not belong here. At all.