Do You Know Where You Live?

Planning ahead for their retirement, my parents bought a place in Marmaris (southwest part of Turkey) some 15 years ago. They made the house their own with bamboo furniture, ceramics and my mom's painted wood relics. My dad went to the small town's bazaar to buy the numbers "1" and "8" painted on ceramic tiles with decorative fringes. He nailed them above the fire place on the front porch. We were number 18 on the villa row, what they called...until a few years ago.

When Dad went to pay the electricity bill, he was told that the address didn't correspond with the town records. He explained he was pretty sure where he lived, but nope - our address had changed. Now we were number 20. They had counted things wrong initially and we now had to go back and change our records on all sorts of bills and papers. So we updated, with number 18 cemented on the porch and number 20 on the garden gate.

A few weeks ago, our address changed again. Not that we moved, but the city changed its mind. There was an error with that area's planning and we are now on street 141, door number who knows what. I asked my dad how he was going to go through all the papers to update. He replied with a voice that had given up on sensible order long time ago, "I am not going to do anything...They seem to know where we live anyhow..."