(Back in 1936, when SS#s first appeared, people thought it would be a swell idea to tattoo them onto an arm. )
I’ve just spent a phenomenal amount of time on the phone
with a rep from CitiBank. That’s okay – it’s a rainy day and the biggest thing
on my agenda will be a nap later.
Last week I’d received a form letter
from them regarding my LLBean Mastercard saying they were missing information
on the account. This is my back-up credit card, almost never used (I’m finding
Bean’s prices to be remarkably high. No, I don’t want to spend $45 for a tee
shirt.) except for emergencies. It did come in handy a couple of years ago when
the card we actually use was compromised.
The whole “to avoid disruption to your
card services, please log in, etc.” had me a little nervous, so decided to go
online and check the account, see if I could pop in whatever information they
were looking for.
Except I couldn’t get into the
account. No surprise, since I’ve never needed to before. I called customer
service and a nice lady named Cynthia and I wound our way through the
labyrinth, and wound our way, and wound our way. But no luck. She’s going to
send my problems on to the IT boys and I’ll give it another shot next week.
We hit so many responses of incorrect information
that I even began doubting if I was remembering the last four digits of my SS#
correctly. Thankfully, My Guy knows my number as well as I know his, so he
verified that no, I hadn’t transposed the numbers. (I think his number is
seared into my brain better than my own after his years in the Army; it seemed
anything on base required me to reel them off before buying or doing anything.)
So, as my synapses start slowing down
and the arteries turn to concrete, what to do about this vital number? Should I
write my SS# down? Where would be safe? I’m reminded of the book Still
Alice, a frightening story if ever there was one. She’d thought she’d
created a fail-safe way to ensure that she could still access vital
information, but then forgot how to work through the steps after all.
