All the President's Cards

While on vacation with my American nephews and niece, we got to talking about the hullaboo in America over Barack Obama’s (supposed lack of) birth certificate, the ‘Birther’ movement (which to this blogger sounds a lot like people proposing natural childbirth), the bill introduced in Congress to force Presidential candidates to ‘prove’ their certificates are for real (as if government seals on original birth certificates were not enough ‘proof’), and so on.

And, it struck me, that the Italians, having had a full-fledged working Republic oh, give or take a few thousand years before us, have got the solution nailed.

But, let’s take your docs from the top (forgive me if I've left a few out along the way)…

- Your birth certificate. In the old days, if you were born to a single or unmarried mom, they actually wrote FATHER UNKNOWN. And this was well before sperm banks and test tube babies, so you know, pretty much, that the woman generally knew who she did it with and when…
Nowadays, if you’re born to a single or unmarried mom, the child is pretty much not allowed to have your last name for your efforts of 36 hours in labor – unless you swear on a stack of bibles that the FATHER IS TOTALLY UNKNOWN. In Italy, the only single feminist symbol around is that women, due to the extreme bureaucracy, you are forced to keep your own names. That’s because it’d be so totally impossible to change them even if your name happens to be GianPieroMaria Mangiapane Bevilacqua.
If you were unfortunately saddled with a middle name like every American, you’d then have to consider it like a first name the rest of your life, even if you were named Luisa George after a long-lost uncle in America. Whenever I sign on to my Vodafone account, I’m cheerily met with “Welcome Francesca Martine!”

- Someone in your family would then have to go down to the City offices and make a form, STATO DI FAMIGLIA, announcing your home’s new arrival. At which point, the GARBAGE COLLECTION people would start charging extra, considering you're producing more garbage [and if you stop and think about how many disposable but not biodegradable diapers that baby consumes, you’d think the rate would quadruple, but, let’s not give the authorities any ideas…].
Funny thing is, when your roommate moves out, and you change your Stato di Famiglia, the garbage people somehow don’t quite catch on to the change…

- You then need to get a PASSPORT (if you’re the traveling kind), a CARTA D’IDENTITA’ (an i.d. card which even used to list if you were single, married, widowed or divorced and in an incredible encroachment, I think even dating and available…) and now, a HEALTH CARD which doubles (in an anti- bureaucracy moment of respite) as your SOCIAL SECURITY CARD (codice fiscale).
As you age, you’d have to get a DRIVER’S LICENSE and pay your TV Tax, coming clean on the number of Tvs you have in your household.

- Try moving out of your parents’ home and, most people, to avoid the hassle, keep their RESIDENCY CARD always in place (much to the chagrine of the pappas who pay the garbage tax, but the mammas who are happy to have that little apron string dangling in the form of figuring you into her garbage collection – Of course, with all the meals she prepares for you and sends over in Tupperware containers, you are most likely causing the majority of the garbage over at her homestead anyway).
So, you then must set up your DOMICILE certificate, claiming that you do, indeed, live somewhere else than your primary residence. All this has to do with keeping track of you, where you vote, and, in the case of asking for a mortgage, at what rate you might be getting.

Note: NONE – absolutely none – of the aforementioned documents are stand alone: You need to show proof of almost all of the rest in order that they will allow you to be the recipient of the doc you’re missing. So, they’re all intra-related in some way.

- But the clincher, as a reader once informed me, is what would obviously settle the insane Obama debacle once and for all: The illusive and illustrious CERTIFICATO DI ESISTENZA.

This is, in short, a document in which you claim in front of a government official and in the form of a written statement, that you do, indeed exist.

I am not sure what it’s used for or how they can prove otherwise, seeing that we are not yet double-checking fingerprints nor conducting iris scans, but…perhaps if Obama had dual citizenship, his coughing up this certificate would really put things to rest. Or not.
After all, dual citizenship would probably carry with it its own bill pending in Congress: the Double Birthing Bill [not to be confused with some Octo-mom anti-fertility drug measures].