I encountered the word “Social Security Number” for the first time when I was filling the application form for OIT back in an apartment room in Hokkaido. I did not wondered what it was, as Mr. Fukuhara, who advised me how to study abroad, had taught me how to fill the form before hand. He had simply advised me to cross out the squares for the social security number and to write “Not Applicable” under the squares. I mechanically followed the advice without thinking why I didn’t have to.
But blank spaces for the social security numbers were shown to me again and again after entering the college. In the orientation session for the international students coming in to the OIT, we were told that the school would provide the international students with dummy social security numbers for the school use. According to the explanation, the student registration system would reject our enrollment without some seemingly social security like numbers.
I felt a little humiliated. It sounded like saying, “Our school basically is not for you, foreigners. You need to cheat to enroll.” I did not claim anything based on my impression. All the international students acquired dummy social security numbers starting with several nines. It turned out that what I had to cheat was not only school.
The dummy social security number was valid on campus. It did not take long before the magic number lost its trick. I went to a branch of First Interstate Bank close to OIT to open an account. The attendant there helped me filling in the application form. She asked my social security number. My English back then was extremely poor. I showed my student ID issued by the school and said awkwardly, “This social security number was given by school.” She did not understand what I meant.
“So this is your social security number?”
“Yes. In college.” I answered.
She input the number to the system and got rejected somehow. She tried a few times and made sure that it was not a machine error. Then she walked back to me.
“Well, it doesn’t work. So please tell me again how you got this number?”
“OIT. School gave it to me. I don’t know exactly. I entered the school; I got the card, and the number was on it. The international student adviser told me to use the number when asked.” My clumsy explanation took more than a few minutes.
Clumsy as it was, she got a piece of very useful information in my explanation. That’s the international student adviser that could communicate with her. She left me at the counter and strode to the phone. She made a call to the international student adviser. Her way of saying was not interrogating. It was polite, at least. I did not understand exactly what she was saying. I just only sensed that she was demanding my adviser the means for trouble-shooting.
She came back with a smile. She happily announced that everything was clear. It was only clear to her. She said, “Okay. I understand what was wrong. This number is a dummy number for the student system at the college. We give you our dummy social security number for our system.” What became clear to me was that I needed to use multiple social security numbers for various purposes.
When I opened another account at an S & L branch, I got another new social security number. When I bought an insurance policy for the car, I got still more. When I went to MDV to get the driver’s license, the person at the counter asked me, “What’s your social security number?” By then I had been fed up with this question. I replied, “Which one do you want? I got four of them. And all of them are fake.” I suspect the person was ready to arrest me.
The multiple social security number situation lasted until I became a part time tutor for Japanese, Physics, and Math classes. This time I had to have a real social security number for tax payment. I applied for it and finally obtained it. It took me more than a month to finish all the paper works to replace the fake numbers with the real one. When I completed the unproductive mission, it was less than a year before my graduation.