Just call me Bill - everyone else around here does

BRYSON'S AMERICA

THE OTHER day I had an experience so startling and unexpected that it made me spill a soft drink down my shirt. (Though, having said that, I don't actually need an unexpected event to achieve this. All I need is a soft drink.) What caused this fizzy outburst was that I called a government office - specifically, the US Social Security Administration - and someone answered the phone.

There I was, all poised to have a recorded voice tell me: "All our agents are busy, so please hold while we play you some irritating music interrupted at 15-second intervals by a recorded voice telling you all our agents are busy so please hold while we play you some irritating music" and so on until teatime.

So imagine my surprise when, after just 270 rings, a real person came on the line. He asked some of my personal details, and then said, "Excuse me, Bill. I have to put you on hold a minute."

Did you catch that? He called me Bill. Not Mr Bryson. Not sir. Not O mighty taxpayer, but Bill. Two years ago I would have regarded this as a gross impertinence, but now I find I've rather grown to like it.

There are certain times when the informality and familiarity of American life strains my patience - when a waiter tells me his name is Bob and that he'll be my server this evening, I still have to resist an impulse to say, "I just want a cheeseburger, Bob. I'm not looking for a relationship" - but mostly I have come to like it. It's because it's symbolic of something more fundamental, I suppose.

There is no tugging of forelocks here, you see, but a genuine universal assumption that no person is better than any other. I think that's swell. My dustman calls me Bill. My doctor calls me Bill. My children's headmaster calls me Bill. They don't tug for me. I don't tug for them. I think that's as it should be.

In England, I used the same accountant for over a decade, and our relations were always cordial but businesslike. She never called me anything but Mr Bryson and I never called her anything but Mrs Creswick. When I moved to America, I phoned an accountant for an appointment. When I came to his office, his first words to me were, "Ah, Bill, I'm glad you could make it." We were pals already. Now when I see him I ask him about his kids.

It shows itself in other ways, too. Hanover, where we live, is a college town. The local university, Dartmouth, is a private school and quite exclusive - it's one of the Ivy League colleges, like Harvard and Yale - but you would never guess it.

None of its grounds are off limits to us. Indeed, much of it is open to the community. We can use the library, attend its concerts, go to its commencement exercises if we want. One of my daughters skates on the college ice rink. My son's high school track team practices in winter on the college's indoor track. The college film society regularly puts on seasons of movies, which I often attend. Just last night I saw North by Northwest on a big screen with one of my teenagers, and afterwards we had coffee and cheesecake in the student cafeteria. At none of these things do you ever have to show ID or secure special permission, and never are you made to feel as if you are intruding or unwelcome.

All this gives everyday encounters a sheen of openness and egalitarianism which you may call shallow and artificial, or sometimes even inappropriate, but it also removes a lot of stuffiness from life.

The one thing it won't do, however, is get you your wife's social security number. Allow me to explain. A social security number is approximately equivalent to a British national insurance number, but far more important. It is essentially what identifies you as a person. Failing to understand this, my wife had mislaid her card. We needed the number fairly urgently for some tax form. I explained this to the social security man when he came back on the line. He had after all just called me Bill, so I had reason to hope that we might get somewhere.

"We are only permitted to divulge that information to the designated individual," he replied.

"The person named on the card you mean?"

"Correct."

"But she's my wife," I sputtered.

"We are only permitted to divulge that information to the designated individual."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "If I were my wife, you would give me the number over the phone just like that?"

"Correct."

"But what if it was somebody just pretending to be her?"

A hesitant pause. "We would assume that the individual making the inquiry was the individual indicated as the designated individual."

"Just a minute, please." I thought for a minute. My wife was out, so I couldn't call on her, but I didn't want to have to go through all this again later. I came back on the phone and said in my normal voice: "Hello, it's Cynthia Bryson here. Please could I have my card number?" There was a nervous little chuckle. "I know it's you, Bill," the voice said.

"No, honestly. It's Cynthia Bryson. Please could I have my number?"

"I can't do that."

"Would it make a difference if I spoke in a female voice?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Let me ask you this - just out of curiosity. Is my wife's number on a computer screen in front of you right now?"

"Yes it is."

"But you won't tell me it?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Bill," he said and sounded as if he meant it.

I have learned from years of painful experience that there is not the tiniest chance - not the tiniest chance - that a US government employee will ever bend a rule to help you, so I didn't press the matter. Instead I asked him if he knew how to get strawberry pop stains out of a white T-shirt.

"Baking soda," he replied without hesitation. "Leave it to soak overnight and it will come right out."

I thanked him and we parted.

I would have liked it, of course, if I had managed to get the information I needed, but at least I had made a friend and he was right about the baking soda. The T-shirt came up like new.

Extracted from `Notes from a Big Country', published by Doubleday at pounds 16.99