Gripe the first: My whole name was too long by one letter, so the Assigned Bureaucrat shortened it to A, S, Natividad. I was not amused. The Bureaucrat, growing ever more uneasy with my presence, said if I don't like it I can change my name.
"CHANGE my NAME," I sputtered to Benj in the retelling.
"Couldn't they have put in your first name and middle initial?" said Benj. "That's what they did with me." He showed me his drivers license as proof.
It seemed reasonable. Too reasonable. My brain shut down. "I don't ... KNOW," I said before devolving into a combusting mass of hot goo.
Gripe the second: The new picture is jarring compared to what I'm used to seeing. To start, my cherubic 16-year-old face isn't smiling back at me. For another thing...
"I don't like the eyebrows," I said. "And I have refugee hair."
"What's refugee hair?"
"It's this look that says I hacked my hair off with a dagger in a rush so I could pose as a man to sneak out of the country."
Benj gave me that you-are-so-not-a-team-player look, and life went on as usual.
