When I look like the picture on my passport...

The late, very great Erma Bombeck wrote a book entitled When You Look Like Your Passport Picture, It’s Time to Go Home. I always thought it was a hoot…until today! 

You and Mr. B need a passport, they said. So I begrudgingly dragged my shoes out from under the dining room table and dusted them off. It snowed last Sunday so I haven’t worn them for almost two weeks. Mr. B’s socks work just fine for house shoes and one does not need shoes if one does not go outside. Sure he wears a size 12 shoe and my feet are the only small thing about me but that means his socks don’t bind up my toes. 

Then there was a thing about fixing my hair and putting on something other than flannel pajama pants and a faded T-shirt. All this for a 2x2 picture to go on the passport application! I'm right glad that they didn’t want a 5x7 or I would have had to shave my legs and pluck my eyebrows. 

Don’t go without the proper form all filled out, either, they said. And take your birth certificates and driver’s license. So I printed the form, filled it out all the way to where the thing said STOP! DO NOT SIGN UNLESS ASKED. 

Well, dear hearts, I wasn’t going to even let a drop of ink filter out of my pen and fall upon that portion from there down. They might come and take my two tom cats for punishment. Or worse yet, tell me to get out of their office and never apply for a passport again since I couldn’t follow simple instructions.  

We stopped on the way to the courthouse to get the 2x2 picture taken. The whole way from that point to the office where I was told to go, I prayed that they wouldn’t look at that picture and see a descendent of Ma Barker. Would they make me lay one hand on the Good Book and raise the other and promise that I would not rob any trains or stage coaches on my way to the ship?  

March 6 was my lucky day! The ladies in the office were too young to have known Ma Barker. They hadn’t had any FBI profiling classes so they didn’t realize how nervous I was about this whole procedure. And I didn’t even see a copy of the Good Book so my blood pressure settled down a little bit. 

I handed over the documents and she handed it right back to me with orders to fill out page two. And after I'd been so careful to STOP RIGHT HERE!

Right off the bat, I did it wrong and had to ask for another copy. That was because I was scanning down page two making sure the rotten thing didn't want to know my weight. Only me and God and the lady at the doctor's office know that number and she had to sign an affidavit saying that if she ever repeated it out loud, they would never find her body.

I got to the part about my parents and got stumped again. How was I supposed to remember when my father’s birthday was or where he’d been born? Lord, have mercy! I was the oldest of the first bunch of kids with his first of ten wives. He passed away years ago. I shut my eyes and tried to remember. I hope I got it right or at least close enough. Maybe if I got it wrong they won’t find out about a certain bank robbery when they do the back ground check on my infamous father and find out that I might actually be related to Ma Barker. 

Finally, I got it all done, wrote the checks and she assured me that I should have a passport in a couple of weeks. But after today, I have decided that Miz Erma had it all wrong because folks who look like my passport should put their shoes in the dumpster and forget about going anywhere at all!