Still Breathing? Prove It!

One of the nifty hobbies of old age is proving that you still exist.

When I was younger, existence was taken largely on trust. I would walk into a room and people assumed I was alive. Nobody demanded documentation. Nobody slid a form across the table and asked me to confirm that I had not recently decamped to the Other Side.

Now it seems that every institution in the country has developed doubts.

My pension administrator, for example, sends me an annual form requiring proof that I remain among the living. Every June I complete it carefully and mail it back.

The envelope feels less like correspondence and more like an appeal.

Dear Pension Department,

I regret to inform you that I am still here. Better luck next year.

I imagine a room full of accountants opening these forms with mounting disappointment.

“Egad! Another one.”

“Still kicking?”

“Afraid so.”

“Check again.”

The strange thing is that if I really were dead, I probably would be the least qualified person to complete the form.

There is no box marked:

☐ Deceased, but making an effort.

Meanwhile, the medical profession has its own methods.

Whenever I go for an appointment, I am asked my date of birth.

Then, after a short walk down a corridor, I am asked again.

Then a nurse appears and asks again.

Then a technician asks again.

By the end of the morning I have recited my birthday so often that I begin to suspect it may have changed when my mom wasn’t paying attention.

“Could you confirm your date of birth?”

“Certainly. It was June 14, 1361 five minutes ago. Let me see if anything has happened since then.”

(Zounds! I might have been in here longer than I thought.)

Apparently this is for identification purposes. Fair enough.

But I sometimes wonder what scenario they are guarding against.

“Mr. Samsa entered Reception.”

“Yes.”

“But halfway down the corridor he forgot who he was and became a hideous beetle.”

“Gott im Himmel!”

“Check his birthday immediately.”

“Jawohl, Commandant!”

I believe we’re heading for a future in which every doorway requires a fresh declaration.

“State your name.”

“State your birthdate.”

“State your blood type.”

“State your favourite Lipton Cup-a-Soup flavour.”

Eventually, the examination itself takes only three minutes because the first 45 were devoted to confirming that I am the same featherless biped seen entering the building on the security camera. Now I actually am closer to death, so score one for the pension department vultures.

Then there are passwords.

The modern world has reached the conclusion that memory is the highest human virtue.

To access my bank account I need a password containing 14 characters, three symbols, a capital letter, an ancient rune and the name of a mythical king from the ur text Harry Potter and the Goblet of Bureaucracy.

Then I am asked to verify my identity with a text message sent to a telephone that must itself be unlocked with another password. God help you if you’re a Luddite like me and still haven’t sprung for a cellphone.

I spend so much time proving who I am that I no longer have time to be who I am.

But the true summit of humiliation is the online CAPTCHA test.

Nothing in human history has prepared us for the experience of sitting alone in a room while a machine expresses doubt about our humanity.

“Select all squares containing traffic lights.”

I click the traffic lights.

“Incorrect.”

Apparently I have failed to identify a traffic light that I mistook for a stack of Libby’s bean cans at Superstore. A task that, until this moment, I had believed was within my skill set.

The computer now looks at me the way a disappointed teacher looks at a child who has stuffed half an eraser up his nose. Not that I have any direct experience with such disdain from a trained educator.

“Try again.”

Now I must identify bicycles.

There are nine squares.

One clearly contains a bicycle.

One clearly does not.

The other seven contain fragments of reality, first glimpsed by Baba Ram Dass after 40 straight days of fasting (except for ravenously chewed peyote buttons) at Esalen in 1967.

A shadow.

A wheel.

Possibly a bicycle brake lever.

Possibly an avocado.

One square contains what appears to be a philosophical question.

I click cautiously.

“Incorrect.”

I begin to wonder whether I am human at all.

The machine has evidence.

I do not.

After all, when was the last time another human asked me to identify sixteen crosswalks from an aerial photograph?

Perhaps this is a uniquely biological skill that I somehow missed.

Perhaps all genuine humans instantly recognize microscopic portions of municipal infrastructure.

Is this dagger which I see before me … or Jean Drapeau’s moustache from Expo 67?

The test continues. Of course it does.

“Select all images containing buses.”

I click the buses.

More squares appear.

One bus extends into a second square. Does that count?

What percentage of a bus constitutes a bus?

If one wheel remains visible, is it still a bus?

If only the memory of a bus remains, should I click that too?

Yesterday I dreamed I was a butterfly. Today am I a butterfly impaled on the bumper of the Greyhound carrying Mrs. Carrie Watts from her cramped Houston apartment back to her rural hometown of Bountiful?

Soon I am no longer taking a security test. I am defending a doctoral thesis in transportation metaphysics.

Eventually the machine relents.

“Verification successful.”

This means that after seven minutes of intense examination, a computer has reached the tentative conclusion that I am probably a person.

Probably.

Just enough to allow me access to my electricity bill.

The future isn’t hard to foresee.

At age 95, I will awaken and discover that my refrigerator is locked.

A screen on the door will illuminate.

PROVE YOU ARE HUMAN.

Select all squares containing Lipton Cup-a-Soup.

I will fail.

The refrigerator will remain closed.

My pension will be suspended pending an investigation.

Ignoring the Do Not Resuscitate sign hastily taped to my pyjama top, the paramedic who finds me spread-eagled on the kitchen floor two weeks later will ask my birthdate.

An ER admissions nurse will ask my birthdate.

The attending doctor will ask my birthdate.

Two weeks after that, back in the privacy of my own room at the home, the refrigerator will ask my birthdate.

Finally, exhausted, I will mail a signed affidavit to the Department of Continued Existence.

Several weeks later a letter will arrive.

“We have reviewed your case and are prepared to acknowledge that you remain alive.”

For another year.

Mind you, things could always be worse.

Some people have to climb Everest or walk the Camino to prove they’re still alive.

So long as I can still identify a photo showing a slice of fender in a little white box, I’m set till next June.