And we sorta got a “religion” out of it too!!
Funny story!
It goes a little something like this:
Blair was in charge of getting the license and didn’t realize he needed my ID to get it without me present… a mistake many make according to the woman at city hall.
He took half a day off to get it as they are only open business hours… My Mom & I were getting our hair done and crossed paths with him as he parked at the clinic to save on gas and take transit instead. This was all around 1:30pm and since we were all hungry I suggested lunch! We enjoyed some Freshii goodness and then Blair made his way down to Nathan Phillips Square & City Hall.
Upon realization that I was needed with my ID… he calls me in a panic at 3:30 saying – “Hun!! I need you to get here ASAP and bring your ID”. Thankfully I was still downtown just finishing up some fun shoe shopping with my Mom… So I raced down and made it with lots of time – 15mins – PHEW!!
When we approached the counter to show the city hall woman my ID she noticed we had not filled out our “religion” box!! To which we replied we don’t practice a religion. She said – “are you sure you want to leave it blank???”… we assured her once again that we are not religious… she then instructed us to put the word NONE in the box for each of us…. then handed us a number to wait for the next processing agent… such a process!!
When we got to the second counter she took our form and entered the info into a computerized form (which makes me wonder why I filled it out in the first place) and asked us to double check everything. She then asked us if we were sure we wanted to leave NONE in the religion box. I told her the other woman asked us the same thing and if it was odd to have NONE in the box!!? She said no, and not being religious herself she explained that it was permanently on your license and just wanted to make sure. We both thought it was weird and started to think well maybe we should put something in there… I mean we’re both spiritual, however we don’t practice a particular religion – which is what the box was for!! So I asked can we put the word “Spiritual” in there? She said “you can put whatever you want in there”. So with agreement between us we instructed her to update the form (and change the spelling of his mom’s maiden name) and we were done!
She printed the form again and we looked it over – noticing she had typed “Spiritualism” instead of “Spiritual” in the religion box!! I commented on it and she said – “If you are spiritual you would say you practice spiritualism, like Jewish people practice Judaism. It’s the action of being spiritual”…
So rather then having her print another form, waste another piece of paper, and any more of our time… we said – “Whatever it’s just a word on a piece of paper – life’s what you make it”… and then there’s the fact it really makes a funny story!
As it turns out “Spiritualism” is a religion!! Blair and I left the city hall and in Nathan Phillips Square googled it and found on the Wikipedia:
“Spiritualism is a monotheistic belief system or religion, postulating a belief in God, but with a distinguishing feature of belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world can be contacted by “mediums”, who can then provide information about the afterlife.
Spiritualism developed and reached its peak growth in membership from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-language countries. By 1897, it was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes, while the corresponding movement in continental Europe and Latin America is known as Spiritism.”