They’ve Got My Number

I am a card-carrying contributor to the Social Security system. I have been ever since I was about eighteen when an employer told me that he could not take me on unless, first, I went to the government and got numbered. So I went over to the Social Security Administration and told them the difficulty I had run into, and they told me that the government sympathized with my problem — indeed, with all my problems—and that they would fix it up so that I might put aside part of every paycheck without the inconvenience of having to think it through for myself.

I stood at a post-office-type table and used a post-office-type pen and wrote a short but hilariously funny history of my life. I told them that I was born on December 4, 1927, that I had black hair and brown eyes and that I had nothing to fear but fear itself. Through it all I had a strange feeling that this was a test I couldn’t possibly flunk and that I would have been taken on if I had put down that I weighed seventy-two pounds and intended to try to make my living as a burglar.

JP

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John M. Phillips

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I am a card-carrying contributor to the Social Security system. I have been ever since I was about eighteen when an employer told me that he could not take me on unless, first, I went to the government and got numbered. So I went over to the Social Security Administration and told them the difficulty I had run into, and they told me that the government sympathized with my problem — indeed, with all my problems—and that they would fix it up so that I might put aside part of every paycheck without the inconvenience of having to think it through for myself.

I stood at a post-office-type table and used a post-office-type pen and wrote a short but hilariously funny history of my life. I told them that I was born on December 4, 1927, that I had black hair and brown eyes and that I had nothing to fear but fear itself. Through it all I had a strange feeling that this was a test I couldn’t possibly flunk and that I would have been taken on if I had put down that I weighed seventy-two pounds and intended to try to make my living as a burglar.