I should have been a US citizen by now. A year ago, I blocked out a weekend to work on my application for naturalization. It took me three uninterrupted hours to complete several forms and another hour to comb through details of my life that I don't clearly remember, such as where was I on October 6, 2019. Instead of filing it immediately, I decided to wait a week and carefully examine every detail again. Thinking back on it, I likely did this less for due diligence and more to imagine how proud it would make my mom. Upon hearing about my bureaucratic work ethic, she would say, "Wow, for the first time in his life, he completed a piece of mundane but important paperwork without making a mistake." But, I promptly forgot having ever worked on the application. Tasks like these come back to me when I'm prompted with contextual clues, such as the immigration line at Montreal airport that I encountered a month later. When I logged back in to submit my application, I noticed it had disappeared. I realized that USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) deletes applications from their system if they are not completed within 30 days of starting it.
"'Several signs outside the office asked visitors to refrain from using their phones, yet a woman in line was playing the Barbie theme song out loud. Was she trying to prove her worthiness to be in this country? "
"'Several signs outside the office asked visitors to refrain from using their phones, yet a woman in line was playing the Barbie theme song out loud. Was she trying to prove her worthiness to be in this country? "
lmfao