2007-04-22 The Circumstances Surrounding My Birth (Part II)

Here's the second "spectacular" thing about my birth: When I was born, my parents were not yet married. Back in 1979, this was somewhat scandalous. My dad was still a student at that time, and they didn't marry until he graduated in 1980. (By the way, my dad got a 1.6 after 9 semesters, including 2 semesters off due to my moms hepatitis infection. That makes him 0.1 better than me, I only got a 1.7 and it took me 9 complete semesters to graduate.) The picture on the right shows my mom, myself and my dad at their marriage. As I said, getting a child before being married was somewhat scandalous, but my mothers grandma told her that, given the chance again, she would have done exactly the same thing.
Nowadays it's a bit simpler, but back in the seventies, there was a lot of paperwork to do when the mother was not married. For almost one year, I was in "gesetzlicher Amtspflegschaft". The term is not in my dictionary, but I guess it means something like legal fosterage. Not that they took me away or something -- this is a constitutional state after all -- but they assigned a civil servant as second custodian. That's what my dictionary calls "to appoint someone guardian", as if I had to be guarded because my parents weren't married yet. I don't know if my parents ever met him in person, but according to my files, his name is Hans Schlachter.
An additional bonus, beside the "spectacular" anecdote, is that I've got two birth certificates. The first one for "Marc Poth" (Poth being my mothers maiden name), the second one for "Marc Spoor". That makes me one of the few males who had two different family names. Red tape rules!
Please don't get me wrong, it's a great thing that the law is looking out for babies, because nobody needs more help. I only think it's ridiculous to create a pile of paperwork when the matter is as simple as in my case. I believe they simplified the whole process by now.
Last week, when I was going through my old files to see what could be thrown away, I found these letters that have been send to and from the youth welfare office. You cannot really tell from the picture, but they were written with a typewriter and minor errors such as wrongly placed commas were just crossed out with a pencil. What a decade!

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My new jogging shoes gave me a blister, but all in all they paid off. They almost walk by themselves, I merely had to keep balance. And the best thing for last: I saw a roe deer today! It was standing in the forest beside the road where I was running. I've never seen deer outside a fence before. Aren't they supposed to be shy? It must have known that I was on my way back, exhausted and in no condition to eat it, so it used the opportunity to view a jogger. It's a crying shame that I didn't take my camera with me.