A Story about... Love licenses, Child Rearing and getting Paid

Every two years in California you have to renew your marriage license or the police can come into your bedroom and take the kids out of the stomach. It’s really weird and I’m greatful it hasn’t happened yet.

But this year I got a notice, DOG Certification Required, in addition to paying the normal marriage license fees and getting a red sticker to put on my wife. She forced me to get my marriage registration tattooed on my left finger while I was drinking. I just pay for the tattoo number removal and then get the new one zipped on every year.

“Honey, have you seen this?”

Michelle came over, totally berzerk on Easter Candy which she always buys in bulk but the kids are on diets. Praise Christ.

“No, Honey. I didn’t open your mail this time… what’s up?”

I showed her that she was going to have to pass the Domestic Odor Guard (DOG) and I was going to have to pay. Her face began to really frown and she reminded me that many many Americans have lactic acid problems but I still ordered real milk at Starbucks.

We decided to sit down. I put my hand on a non-offended part of her thigh and said, “I don’t think they will force me to scrap you if you don’t pass,” and Michelle was not comforted because the fear is real.

The fear is really real. The state recently took our favorite garbage can for having a missing lid. Then they took 10 feet of the front of our property for a future project, undefined. Then they took one of our three kids for the mandatory enlistment in the California Conservation Corps (CCC) and she came back shell-shocked, saying we were all going to die by neuro-tramsitters found in soft drinks and coffee. This is the reason the CCC only drinks wheat germ extract and wakes up at dawn to conserve light and some human energy.

Michelle began to really get worried when she saw that I needed a DOG check too.

“But I just had a rectal-gram last year?” Sometimes you have to get checked every year if you are over 40 and your grandparent's death certificate erroneously mentioned stomach cancer. All the records are computerized now and intermingle. It used to be great when you could have terrible finances for the IRS and be a banker's big smile for lending. You can blame the gigantice mass of connected databases on 9-11 or Lexus Nexus.

Frances put down her Save the Tree Frog redwood baton and asked, “If the state takes away your license, am I still your daughter?” She began to welt about the eyes.

Michelle didn’t waste any time but took out her Super Mom pink cape from the closet. She clipped this under her neck, bent down, and looked our little CCC girl in the eyes. “You will _always_ be our little girl!”

I put up my coffee mug to say ‘ditto,’ because my people don’t make unnecessary eye contact with children, but spoil our children’s children as a form of payback for any underlying hostilities.

We waited until Frances went off to her room to study tree blood or something conservationy.

“Tom, I’m scared.”

My people say it is ok to give a spouse a hug when they think they’re going to die or something. So she gets one of those huggy things without an expectation of favorable congress. “There… there… I pat her head.

I don’t really know why my people pat heads. It’s like they are trying to dislodge the bad thoughts in the brain? I mean it's all connected by synapses, adn it would be better if they had tapped our heads with a mallet or hammer.

She mumbles, “If the girls become non-authorized I want to try getting licensed again and adopt them back.”

“Sure. That sounds fine.”

Sometimes, if you don’t pass DOG then the state will pretend to send you cleaning supplies or whatever it takes to get you to pass. I have buddies with old marriages that just said it wasn’t worth waiting. You shouldn’t have to wait 9 months to be allowed to enjoy your own spouse anymore.

*

Fast forward to the appointment. We had to go to the Level 2 version of DOG because SOMEONE forgot to update their married name because they didn’t want to spell it differently than their college degrees.

Michelle figured out the acid thing, had a minor hysterectomy and passed the lithmus tests with flying colors. Me? I however, had a few problems under the hood. When the state inspector asked where I was born, I made a joke and said, “Idaho.” Idaho is not on the approved locations for California brides. They wanted me to drive all the way back to Meridian and get a Transfer of Origin.

I said “Idunknow” not “Idaho.” But it didn’t matter. The inspectors cannot unfile that which has been filed.

So we lost the kids.

A state inspector came out to see if we were potentially capable parents. The trick is to give your kids away before the state takes them, and then you don’t have to go through all these interviews to make sure you are worthy.

It’s actually a decent system, though Michelle said we had to clean the house over and over. I said, “Keep it messy so that the social worker knows we are kid-ready.”

We compromised with a garden rake and pushed all the kid's toys and pets under the beds. Threw in a bug bomb, went and watched a movie, came back, and turned on the robot vacuum.

Michelle had to be fingerprinted even though she works for the NGO version, of Foster Services and I had I had to go do twenty-seven units of parenting classes. I don’t know why they picked me, but the women just shrugged and said, “It’s random.”

So I went to this place called Accelerate Recovery which has a long menu of options to fix: Justified-Anger/Nose-Picking/Sterility/Judmental-of-Others-Syndrome/ and of course My Parents Sucked (sobriety). In Acceleberate Recovery, we sing for a minute to get the larynx moisturized and then have to go speak in group. We go off to our specialized groups, learn about what our parents did wrong, and go back to the main room and have cookies.

For example, I did not know it was inappropriate to let 8-year-olds ride a bicycle 7 miles from home without a cell phone.

For example, I did not know that even minor primates need more than seven hugs per week to get tribal bonds and be able to complete wars together.

For example, rubbing brandy on baby gums = bad, and now I have to take away Michelle’s Super Mom Melatonin supply.

At the end of the session, I wanted to call up my old parents and tell them to expect a large bill for after-wound care. Since they are both senile and hard of hearing, I’ll just have to take it out of their gambling budget.

After 5 or 6 weeks of quiet in the house, we got the social worker to bring the kids back. They looked really sad because their foster parents had been so nice and had a huge swimming pool with one of those water slides and a trampoline which a kid could jump on and land in the hot tub. They got out of chores for 6 weeks and someone boosted their cellphone minutes. Since Michelle and I had to get remarried and were effectively a new entity of the state, we were going to have to foster our own kids with state supervision.

Also, I asked the social worker if I could get my dog back?

They asked me to describe Caspain. “Well, he’s a mountain dog. Kinda fat.”

“How fat?”

Michelle and I looked at each other, “A hundred and thirty t… make that a hundred and thirty eight pounds.” (Sorry, Caspi.) (He’s very sensitive about his weight.) The social worker put my dog’s description into the state database, and I said that she couldn’t miss him. “He poops like 3 lbs a day.”

Then she frowned. “I know exactly who you mean and you’re lucky you got certified because he only had another week of bail left. That dog’s a menace.”

Caspi?

“His log shows that he was given a bath on inception and the dog literally defecated and clogged the drain for the entire facility on Hitchcock Road.” She put her glasses down on her nose. “Do you know how much state-certified plumbers cost?”

We all shook our heads “no” because we heard they were very expensive.

“If that dog had been in your ownership at the time you would have gotten a 2 million dollar bill. Put it that way.”

This is probably the reason California taxes are so high – we have bigger dogs who get nervous without their dad. It’s not his fault, but we have to take care of our three-foot-high friends who hate water and won’t fetch a ball. Some dogs are just made to sit and look pretty.

Speaking of this, Michelle gave me the STHU command when Stephanie-the-Social Worker asked to see where our kids watch television and do their homework.

“What do you mean?”

By state law, the children need a dedicated television so that our social views don’t intrude upon their agency as junior citizens of California. I felt dumb. I broke my silence and asked, “What else are we supposed to know?”

These minor items hadn’t been brought up in My Parents Kinda Sucked School (MPKSS). Their Christian version of parent classes was probably not up to exacting secular legal code. They made parents out ot be a form of Santa Claus who must occasionally get the children to choose the right.

“What else do we need besides dedicated television?”

“2300 calories each day or 3200 if they are in sports.”

Soda. Check.

“Anything more to pass? “

She checked if any of the kids had their tonsils removed because ice cream was mandatory for a week after surgery. “Are you making a payment plan with the Tooth Fairy?”

Michelle stepped up because the state mandated a minimum of $5 per tooth. It wasn’t right that some poor kids were getting their teeth punched out so that wealthy kids could go home and make up to a hundred dollars off the mouths of others.

“We’re making monthly payments on time, and we are in good standing.”

Stephanie looked sceptical because the Franchise Tooth Board had not sent back her request for information. As our kids were already teenagers, we owed over 7500 dollars plus accrued interest.

I wanted to raise my hand, but Michelle was giving me those crossbow eyes like she was going to shoot bolts in a minute. Stephanie opened the door and blew a whistle, and then three kids and the dog came bounding in, mostly ignoring us before they remembered we had to go shopping for their dedicated televisions.

That’s when Stephanie took a white envelope out of her briefcase and handed this to my wife. I waited till the door was closed, and the sound of a car engine screached out of the driveway.

“What’s that about?”

Michelle didn’t even wait to quickly open the envelope and started hopping around. She got me hopping too… “What? What’s going on?” I didn’t understand government affairs at all.

“We got our first maintenance dispersment.”

“What?”

Michelle explained that since our “previous” kids were wards of the state, they would have four years of college paid for. In addition, we would get 1800 dollars per kid BUT… “One of them is marked as special needs!”

That was an additional $3800/month in this case.

I didn’t want to know who the State thought had funny genetics or behavior because it was all too shocking.

I waited.

But then I had to know… “Who is it?”

Michelle smiled like a devil, and I was suddenly afraid that we were married again.

“They marked Caspian as a human child.”

Hahaahaha

Now I stay home all day and learn to father. It is a job with enormous benefits.