It’s god damn thirty in the morning, which is to say, when I usually wake up. I don’t usually wake up this anxious to get the day over, but today’s our USCIS Initial Interview where, if everything goes well, we’ll get stamped and approved for Stuart’s Permanent Residence (Conditional Upon Marriage) and we won’t have to futz with the USCIS for another couple of years.
See all the unnecessary capital letters in the middle of sentences? That’s the USCIS experience for you. I’ve been on message boards with posts that have titles like “My FOP isn’t working with the GRV and I need two extra 563 and a ORP/RGT! Help!” I’m not even kidding. Actually, the real terms are AOS, EAD, 765 and 485, AP and 130, and people, I DIDN’T LOOK AT THE DOCUMENT PILE, I’ve got that shit memorized.
Prowling the message boards to find out what to expect is sort of like listening to rumors about the French Resistance during World War Two. They WILL look at pictures? They don’t? It’ll last 20 minutes? It’ll last six hours with a follow-up? Affidavit of Support? How many times have I submitted that, wait, you want another one? The song-and-dance segment of today’s interview will directly follow the scotch tasting?
At this point, I WOULDN’T be surprised if the presiding officer breaks out into a rudimentary welcome routine involving two penguins, a flying car, and a stack of pancakes. I won’t be surprised by anything. I know what to expect except for what they tell you you’ll never know to expect. Yeah, see?
Last night Stuart and I sat around quizzing each other on the facts of our lives, just for fun because we certainly KNOW everything about each other including the full range of each other’s school names, first kisses, parents’ middle names, maiden names and birthdays. It got a little silly, like when I said, “what surgery have I had?”
And Stuart answered, “well, an appendectomy during the blackout, and the… eh… they anally probed you for cysts when you were little.”
“… That’s COMMONLY REFERRED TO AS A COLONOSCOPY, AND IT WAS FOR POLYPS.”
“Whatever.”
We also know each other’s family secrets, each other’s deepest fears and resentments, what turns the other on and how to make the other laugh in the middle of anything, including church, a wedding or a funeral, or a USCIS interview. Only the surface information in our lives will be laid bare for these people today – our lease, our marriage certificate, our photo albums. But if it gets tense in there, I might just do the wiggly hand thing. And that’s for the LAUGHING, not the turning-on.
Or I’ll refer to my colonoscopy as an anal probing, and see if I can keep a straight face.
Those USCIS guys have NO IDEA what goofballs are about to whirl into their lives. Maybe they’ll stamp us just to get us out of there.