Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you’ve reached “adulthood” and then you figuratively faceplant in a series of mistakes that make you think you’ve actually got the responsibility of the average 10 year old and no one’s had the heart to tell you? Yeah, that was our passport experience in a nutshell. It kind of goes without saying that if you’re planning on going anywhere out of the States your passport is the most important thing in your possession, you know, right in front of your iPad. So it would stand to reason that you’d take extra good care of it as a responsible adult. Yeah, you’d think so wouldn’t you? We’ve had ours since 2005 and kept them in a safe place and even used them several times over the last few years always keeping track and putting them back in a safe spot upon getting back home. For whatever reason after our house hunting trip this didn’t happen, at least not with my passport. The day we got back Amy had to send hers to be processed for an Italian work Visa (it was sent to an Italian Embassy in Texas…wouldn’t have guessed that one). Mine? Well, honestly it just kinda went down the memory hole. After getting back we had just a couple of weeks to get our life together to leave and I hit the ground running. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, I really don’t know how it didn’t think of it until the exact second I heard Amy gasp as she was folding clothes. The sheer gut wrenching horror that hits you when you realize that she found your passport and not a Palmetto bug (cockroach) is enough to make you puke, especially when YOU did the laundry (on a side note, after all this was over Amy asked ‘and what lesson did we learn here?’ My answer was that I shouldn’t be allowed to do laundry anymore….ever.  Sadly, she didn’t agree.) So, standing in the middle of our living room with less than 14 days before we leave the country for a couple of years I held in my hand a horribly warped and mangled passport that was sure to be rejected by any passport control on the planet (except for maybe Canada, they were always really nice).

Just so you know, there is some real ambiguity in the instructions on how to handle a damaged Passport. Lost or stolen? No problem. Renewal? Got you covered. Washed it like an idiot? Welcome to a bureaucratic black hole where we acknowledge that this happens all the time (by washing machine no less, but lets be honest, you don’t “accidentally” put it through a freaking wood chipper and if you did you probably don’t need it anymore anyway) but we’re not going to be really specific about the process and we don’t have a specific form for it. Ohhh Goody! It’s like doing your taxes with the warm, efficient, and friendly service of the Post Office (you get to go there too by the way). Anyway, just for future reference to save you some time, should you wash your passport, it’s considered a “NEW” passport and not a renewal. The process is completely different and if you get it wrong it will cost you some FedEx fees and a couple of days of time, not to mention the embarrassment of having some one from FastPort Passport call you and tell you without actually saying it that you may have the IQ of a fence post. Good times. You see, if you need to get this done fast you have to fill out the paperwork like you were going to mail it (NEW, not renewal) and go to the Post Office with all your stuff and pray that you’ve got everything cause if not you’re going to wait three hours and THEN have someone tell you that you need something and to come back later, and then have a company walk it through the process manually in one of like 6 cities in the U.S. (Another side note, I already had my prison photo…er passport photo taken so I didn’t need one there but there was a small girl there at the Post Office whose poor mother had everything under control for the entire three hour wait until the little tike sat on the stool to take the picture and then she sobbed like she was going to be executed by firing squad. It was funny cause it wasn’t my kid, #imahorribleperson). Fortunately for me my passport was still legible so I didn’t need the “long form” birth certificate that sent everybody else packing after three hours of waiting. After getting all this stuff sorted, paid for, signed and sealed I could then go to the FedEx and ship it BACK to FasportPassport where I had sent it four days before with the incorrect stuff. Ironically enough right after dropping this off we had to go to Boeing to have the required psych evaluation before we could leave…the fact that I just spent three hours at the Post Office should clear any of those red flags right up.

Now we wait….and wait, and wait some more. No news is technically good news except for the part where I’m quickly approaching my “I’m leaving the country for two years” date at a full sprint and I don’t know if I’ll have the one document on the face of the earth that’ll let me go yet. Many phone calls, complaining, and badgering later it finally arrives less than 48 hours before the plane takes off. WHEW! Glad that’s over….except it’s not. You see, that was just MY passport. This entire time Amy’s passport was sitting in a limbo of its own (though, technically her’s was in a legit process not one born of her own stupidity like mine). Her’s got to our house the day before mine. Before we left, and before the printer got packed up, we had to scan a copy of the work visa and send it off to someone at work. After my new one arrived Amy took it and said, “Ok, I’m going to put this one with mine!” Except, her’s wasn’t where she thought it was. In Amy’s Mom’s car, who had just left 3o minutes or so before this revelation, was a printer/scanner/fax….with Amy’s passport still sitting on the scanner glass. It wasn’t until we started looking for her Passport that it hit me like a ton of bricks, “CALL YOUR MOTHER, TELL HER TO STOP!”.  So she did, AND added (and I quote), “These passports are going to be the death of me.” Granted, this could have been worse. The printer could have been packed up with the rest of the stuff in the house, which would have been a nightmare to work out. Here at least it was only about 30 minutes up the road, and better still not all the way to Tennessee yet.  It was at this point I decided that every passport should probably come with a prescription of Prozac or blood pressure medication just so you survive the experience. In the end, we did have them both, and to her credit Amy was still smiling (could be the medication, still not sure).

Two Passports, less than 24 hours to go. Note the incredibly empty garage, it hasn’t been that way since last Thanksgiving. Apparently you have to move to fix a problem like that.