My editor recently asked me if I write fiction. I have always
been a firm believer in the old adage that truth is indeed
stranger than fiction.
Therefore, rather than dream up something that might have
come out contrived, I have decided to share with our
Yated readership the true but incredible story of my
six-month long effort to obtain an Israeli driver's license
with a credible birthdate.
The story actually began in 1997 when I received my first
Israeli license. It was issued in May of 1977, with the
understanding that it would expire five years afterwards.
A few months before the license expired, I received a form in
the mail to fill in and send back in order to renew it. I
completed the form, sent in all of the information that was
needed, and lo and behold, I received a new license.
It was nicely laminated and very official looking, but my
date of birth was incorrect. I'm not sure how these things
work, but it seems that a license is usually dated on one's
birthday and keeps coming up for renewal on said birthday ad
infinitum. Therefore, the clerk who typed in the data did not
check to see my actual date of birth. She took the day and
month from the expiration date of the old license, added to
it my birthyear, and thereby created a new birthdate for
me.
My husband was going past the Clal building on an errand and
volunteered to bring in my new license for correction. So far
so good.
A few weeks later, I received another new license. It had the
correct day and month of birth, but through a typo, my
birthyear now started with `16' instead of `19.' We women do
tend to be a bit touchy about our ages and I was less than
thrilled to have anyone think I had aged three hundred years
overnight.
I was sorry I had started up with the license bureau to begin
with, but the die was cast. Here I was with an official
document, accepted in many places as a means of verifying my
identification, and it purported that I was easily the oldest
person in the country [barring other similar typos]!
A few weeks later, another errand took my husband past the
Clal building and he again returned to request a corrected
license for me.
This time, the clerk told my husband that I would have to
submit proof of my correct birthdate before any change could
be made. She asked my husband to bring in one of several
acceptable documents to be submitted with my request for a
change of birthdate. I suppose she often gets requests from
disgruntled customers who want to shave a few hundred years
off their age, and she was certainly right to be sure that I
really hadn't been born in the seventeenth century. A person
in a position of public trust can't be too careful, you
know.
Back went my loyal spouse with the required documentation.
Off to the copying machine went the clerk and back to the
powers that be went my license.
Less than a month later, a third license arrived, but, alas,
the office to which the clerk had returned License No. 2 had
not believed my story.
One would think that someone in the office responsible for
generating these things would do some sort of proofreading
before popping licenses into the laminating machine and into
the mail. I can picture the scenario if such were the
case:
The proofreader might glance at the license and say to his
coworker, "Say, Yossi, don't you think we ought to have some
kind of upper limit on the age of people we allow to
drive?"
"I guess so, Shmulik. What do you have in mind?"
"Well, here's a lady who is getting a renewal and she's a
little over 350 years old! Do you think it's safe for us to
let her keep driving?"
"Shmulik, you must have had too many of those rumballs that
Anat brought in from her leftover shalach monos. The
days of Serach bat Asher are over. No one is 350 years old
these days!"
"Oh, yeah? Well, I was always good in math, so I can prove it
to you. It's 2003 now. Right?"
"Right."
"That's what I thought. And it says right here that this lady
was born in the 1640's. Now doesn't that mean that she's 350
plus? I rest my case."
After that little repartee, and after the effects of the
rumballs wore off everyone involved, I would have expected
that either or both of the officials in the license bureau
would have pulled out my application, verified that I was
actually born in the mid-twentieth century, and sent me a
corrected license.
However, truth IS stranger than fiction. If you can't believe
someone whom a government agency says is four times as old as
your great-grandfather, may he live until...who can you
believe?
My husband is getting to know the people in the license
office quite well, and they are really being very pleasant
about his frequent visits. But I am up to License No. 5. And
still counting!
