Thursday, March 8, 2007

Passport renewal humiliation...

If you're Canadian you now need a passport to fly to the U.S., which isn't a problem as I've had a passport forever. However, it expires this month, so I need to get it renewed. Usually, this wouldn't be a big deal, but because every Canadian who's never had a passport now needs one, you're looking at a 2-3 hour wait in line at any passport office.

To get around this, I decided to submit mine well in advance. I had a set of photos taken in late January and put them next to the kitchen phone. The following day, they were gone. Frantic, I spent a few hours searching for them, then gave up and went into the city to have another set taken. I put these ones next to our family address book in the kitchen and (you guessed it) two days later they disappeared. Frustrated, I had a third set taken and drove these directly to my lawyer to have them validated before Fedexing the package off to Quebec.

Yesterday, I found the first set of photos on my husband's desk, neatly tucked in with some bills, and as I stood there holding them, my eight-year-old walked up beside me.

"What're those?" he asked, frowning.

"Horrible pictures of mom that make me look like a criminal," I replied. To prove it, I pulled them out and showed him.

He shrugged. "They're not that bad."

"You don't think so?" I said.

Ready for his reply? "No," he said. "They're a lot better
than the other ones I took to school to glue onto my
family history board."

9 comments:

Melissa Amateis said...

OOHH! LOL! That is priceless!

Katie Alender said...

Oh!

Passport photos are the absolute worst. In my first set, I look chubby and odd, so for the next set (name change), I made sure to wear black (thinning), eye makeup, lipstick, whatever. I mean, sure, you're not allowed to smile, but everything else was okay.

Yeah, so, I think the US government digitally removed my makeup. I look like a drab, miserable Eastern European spy or something. You can call me Katyuska.

LadyBronco said...

hahahahaha!

Now, that's something one of my boys would do!

Larramie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Heidi the Hick said...

bwa ha ha ha ha!

Oops.

We need to do this too. Our have expired. I'm such an idiot and wished I'd kept up with it!!!

Anonymous said...

*roar* So what now? Holly crawls through a school window in the middle of the night with a flashlite between her teeth to remove said criminalistic photo from a grade 3 display that has probably left the teacher pitying your poor child! Ha! You women and your picture vanity kill me.
Laughing in Texas.

Therese said...

Love this tale!

You *do* have the Erma Bombeck family. :)

Wendy Roberts said...

The wait in Vancouver is 5 hours. I just did this last month because my passport expired end of December. I was renewing the passports for myself, hubby and the 4 kids and after waiting in line for the 5 hours the bored looking clerk told me our priest had forgotten to sign the pictures of my 7 year old. I had to come back with them signed and wait another hour. Ugh!

RK Sterling said...

LOL - oh, you gotta love kids, don't ya. :)