To celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of my birth, Mrs. R and I have decided to spend a long weekend on the Yucatan Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of Cancun.
I mean, let’s face it; they don’t call me "Mr. Spontaneity” for nothing.
Oh wait, actually they don’t call me that for anything. "Mr. Somebody Check His Pulse Is He Still Breathing?” is more like it.
After talking with a co-worker one day I came home singing the praises of Cancun, a place that I had never been to before. A couple of days later we made the arrangements and were set to go. Well almost anyway.
There was the small matter of getting permission to leave from, and then return to, the good ol’ US of A. We needed to get passports, which is a much easier sentence to type than to actually accomplish.
Mrs. R is a naturalized citizen, having been born in Stuttgart. We were unable to find her birth certificate, but we did locate her citizenship papers and her expired passport from when she was a teenager.
Me? I’m 'merican. Born right here in Colorado. Even got the birth certificate, complete with a footprint, as proof. (On a side note, it is difficult to imagine that my feet were ever that small.) What could possibly go wrong?
We had our passport photo’s taken, (apparently senior pictures from high school are not acceptable), filled out the paperwork and headed to the post office. We were both a little apprehensive because we were anticipating having difficulties with Mrs. R’s application. Boy, were we wrong.
We patiently waited our turn in line, and then went into the little room at the post office. We were friendly, polite, ingratiating, and reverential to the clerk. As a bureaucrat myself, I know how effective this can be…
It worked! Mrs. R’s application sailed though without any trouble. Phew, that was a close one…
Then the clerk looked at my paperwork, sniffed, and gave me that “stern, over the top of her reading glasses look,” and said “Is that your birth certificate?”
“Yes” I meekly replied.
“Well it’s not going to work.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
You need an official one from the state,” she said. “Too many forgeries these days.”
Although I was confused as to why someone would want, or need, to forge my footprint, I gamely fought back.
“It’s from the hospital were I was born, just up the road a bit. It’s got my foot print and everything.”
In attempt to provide proof that my birth certificate was not a forgery, I took off my shoe and sock, and placed my foot on the counter. Snapped a hamstring when I did it, too.
Well, for some reason the clerk took offense to this, and I was escorted from the building, sans one shoe and one sock, and asked not to return until I had “cooled off for 24 hours, or the restraining order expires, whichever comes first.”
So Mrs. R and I headed to a soulless, antiseptic “Office of Vital Records” building, where, for just $17, I got an “official” copy of the document I already had in my hand.
The next day I went back to the passport office, waited in line, got back in front of the same clerk, who declared that my paperwork was now in order. It was when she asked to see my drivers license that I realized I had left my billfold back at my desk at work.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, after three trips to the passport office, my application was duly stamped, notarized, and fed to the system.
Noithin’ to it….
I mean, let’s face it; they don’t call me "Mr. Spontaneity” for nothing.
Oh wait, actually they don’t call me that for anything. "Mr. Somebody Check His Pulse Is He Still Breathing?” is more like it.
After talking with a co-worker one day I came home singing the praises of Cancun, a place that I had never been to before. A couple of days later we made the arrangements and were set to go. Well almost anyway.
There was the small matter of getting permission to leave from, and then return to, the good ol’ US of A. We needed to get passports, which is a much easier sentence to type than to actually accomplish.
Mrs. R is a naturalized citizen, having been born in Stuttgart. We were unable to find her birth certificate, but we did locate her citizenship papers and her expired passport from when she was a teenager.
Me? I’m 'merican. Born right here in Colorado. Even got the birth certificate, complete with a footprint, as proof. (On a side note, it is difficult to imagine that my feet were ever that small.) What could possibly go wrong?
We had our passport photo’s taken, (apparently senior pictures from high school are not acceptable), filled out the paperwork and headed to the post office. We were both a little apprehensive because we were anticipating having difficulties with Mrs. R’s application. Boy, were we wrong.
We patiently waited our turn in line, and then went into the little room at the post office. We were friendly, polite, ingratiating, and reverential to the clerk. As a bureaucrat myself, I know how effective this can be…
It worked! Mrs. R’s application sailed though without any trouble. Phew, that was a close one…
Then the clerk looked at my paperwork, sniffed, and gave me that “stern, over the top of her reading glasses look,” and said “Is that your birth certificate?”
“Yes” I meekly replied.
“Well it’s not going to work.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
You need an official one from the state,” she said. “Too many forgeries these days.”
Although I was confused as to why someone would want, or need, to forge my footprint, I gamely fought back.
“It’s from the hospital were I was born, just up the road a bit. It’s got my foot print and everything.”
In attempt to provide proof that my birth certificate was not a forgery, I took off my shoe and sock, and placed my foot on the counter. Snapped a hamstring when I did it, too.
Well, for some reason the clerk took offense to this, and I was escorted from the building, sans one shoe and one sock, and asked not to return until I had “cooled off for 24 hours, or the restraining order expires, whichever comes first.”
So Mrs. R and I headed to a soulless, antiseptic “Office of Vital Records” building, where, for just $17, I got an “official” copy of the document I already had in my hand.
The next day I went back to the passport office, waited in line, got back in front of the same clerk, who declared that my paperwork was now in order. It was when she asked to see my drivers license that I realized I had left my billfold back at my desk at work.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, after three trips to the passport office, my application was duly stamped, notarized, and fed to the system.
Noithin’ to it….
2 comments:
To those of you who are my friends, and don't know Mr. Rogue very well:
Note that sometimes Mr. R. exaggerates in his blogs. In this particular adventure, however, he underxaggerated. He actually made 4 trips to the Post Office. The 2nd one was right after he received his "official" birth certificate. By then, the line was so long, we were afraid the clerk would make good on her threat that,"If the lifne is too long, I'll close early, because I'm only one person and I just can't handle it. " We decided the Mr. could go back the next day.
Well, we understand! Been there and done that. We went through the passport/birth certificate trauma due to having misplaced our official papers somewhere along the line. We had to go back to the State's of Nebraska and Oklahoma to get "official" copies. Then wait WEEKS for our passports. "They" promised 6 weeks and it took about 11! Welcome to "our country"! (We had to cancel our trip to Baja.)
But, wait... You haven't lived until you turn 65 (in about 15 years, if you are lucky) and go to Social Security to get signed up for that whole business. Far worse than passports or driver's licenses. And SS is a whole "nudder" story. We waited in line for an hour just to get an appointment three weeks off!
O'Bro
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