She's a Person, Not a Number!!

Grace, now 25 days old, received her first official mail a few days ago from the Social Security Administration. (sure she's received plenty of mail from loving family members who have sent wonderful gifts - but we are talking about the govt here people!) Already, at the mere age of 25 days, Grace has been reduced from a person to a number. I'm certain the IRS can't wait for her first tax return to get a portion of her self worth as well.

It got me thinking, what's in that number. I have known through my experience in the military that SSN's were assigned regionally and that you could guess fairly accurately where someone was from by the fist three digits of their number. I set out to find just how true this was and determine the method to that madness. I combed the SSA.gov web page, and got a lot of good info from a few pages perporting to be able to find your runaway lover via a SSN search. As it happens, there's quite the rigorous process to assigning a social security number. I've chosen links from both official and unofficial sources which I think are the best information I've found. Feel free to puruze the information for your own edification.

The SS Admin has official info - but poor formatting: http://www.ssa.gov/employer/stateweb.htm

As this location is trying to sell things, I feel the information is less reputable, but it looks a lot better than what the govt threw down on their web page: http://www.usrecordsearch.com/ssn.htm

In case you were wondering Grace will forever be marked as a Washington native, if not by anything else other than the number the government has permanently assigned her.