So, we sold the house, we got a storage unit, we are systematically (maybe it is more haphazard than systematic.... but we are doing it!) getting rid of excess stuff that inhabits every closet, cupboard, drawer and shelf in the house. It seemed like passports for the kids was a good next step to a travel based life. We couldn't all go together unless we went on a Saturday and since we were obtaining passports for minor children, both parents had to go. Never knew. In the entire city of over 400,000 people only one passport office is open on Saturdays. One. And apparently we picked the Saturday when a good portion of those 400,000 residents also wanted to get their passports. Actually, had that been the case, the 4 hours we spent there would have been more understandable. But it really wasn't all that crowded. It was just slow.
The passport office closed at 3:30. We picked up Noah from work and went straight there arriving at 2:18. Really. I know, because at 18 minutes past the hour I had to return to feed the one-hour-only parking meter three times!
At 2:30 a post office employee started working his way down the line passing out numbers. We got number 301 and were informed that we would be the last people to get passports processed that day. It was still almost an hour before they were supposed to close. Plainly he expected it to take at least that long to get to us.
Next they began setting up crowd control barriers around us with hand made signs proclaiming "NO MORE PASSPORTS WILL BE PROCESSED TODAY." But people did continue to show up (since they were still open after all) and since the post office employees had conveniently disappeared, those of us lucky enough to have received a number were left to explain--and apologize-- for them.
As we continued to wait in a line that seemed to barely move, outside a door that seemed to be staunchly closed against us, we began to look enviously at those who had thought to bring... or more likely had taken the time to run out and buy... snacks. Bugles and Sun Chips and whatever that koolaid like beverage that preschooler across the hall from me was drinking never looked so appetizing.
The children in line began to wander from their families. One young man began entertaining himself by playing a curling type game utilizing the long empty hallway and his sister's glasses. My children and their friends (because we blessedly ran into friends when we got there. They were kind enough to stick it out until the very end with us... ok, they're passport ordeal ended approximately 2 minutes before ours did) were definitely discussing if the smallest of them would fit into the big package drop off box. We discovered that one of the post office boxes had a small section crossed off enabling us to peer all the way through to the empty workroom. We also noticed that at least one sign on the wall was held there by velcro and could be peeled right off. We weighed water bottles, purses and phones on a scale that calculated the price to send them to any US zipcode or to Canada or Mexico. Liam made faces at the security cameras.
When we got towards the front of the line we realized that the door we were waiting outside of was labeled as only "Step One" in the passport process. This considerably dampened our enthusiasm about finally being admitted through that door. "Step one" turned out to be a post office employee looking at everything we brought with us to ensure that we had all the correct documentation. Probably it would have made the most sense for this to have happened a little less than 2 hours plus after we had arrived there. But I am not an expert in passport applications. Our documentation was deemed adequate and we were sent back out to wait in the official passport waiting room now. And continued to wait.
The waiting room had a "now serving" display, and every time a new number popped up there it was like someone had just won a grand prize. And when whoever was in charge of such things forgot to change the number on display when they took a new person back, it was an extreme exercise in patience not to totally freak out over the omission.
Eventually it was our turn. We signed papers. Four times we raised our hands and swore these photos were of each of our children and that all the information on their applications was accurate. The post office dude re wrote everything we had already written and did a lot of stapling and reorganizing of the various papers and then he typed it all again into his computer. Really it felt like it could have been more efficient, but by then we had been worn down, we didn't care, we just wanted to go home and eat some leftover pizza.
We may have panicked briefly when we discovered as we were leaving that the doors we had been using all afternoon were locked from the outside. We were trapped! And had already exhausted all forms of entertainment that the post office could offer us. But there were other doors. We made our escape.
Passports applications: check.
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