Passport

My friend Vivian, who I've know since 5th grade in Brazil, is getting married this May. The wedding is in her hometown in Toronto, Canada. With the new travel policies, Mason needs a passport.

Being a planner, I looked up the form a month or two ago, filled it and printed it out. We waited to have a more "recent" picture, since he is changing so fast. So, I worked it out that I needed to get everything submitted by March.

Since he won't stay still, I figure we could have better chances of getting good pictures if we did it ourselves. It took about 10 shots to get one good one. Forms were already completed. And I had ordered extra copies of his birth certificate just for the occasion. Bill, I (both parents need to be present) and Mason headed to the nearest post office that processes passports on Saturdays, with all documents in hand.

First we noticed a big sign at the beginning of the line "passport by appointments only". Oops!

Since there were only two people in line, we decided to wait to "ask", mainly hoping they would take us without an appointment. The very nice guy behind the counter confirmed we needed an appointment. He said the lines for passports have been hours long. I said "really?" as I looked around at the empty post office.

Then he looks at my form, and said "Oh, you need a new form. We just changed the forms 2 weeks ago." I guess it doesn't pay to be prepared.

He asks to see the pictures, which were the correct size (2x2), but says "Cute picture, but his head is too big in the photo. Yeah, those won't work." He says all this in a very nice way, by the way.

So, wrong form, wrong pictures, and no appointment. At that point, I have given up hope, so I asked if we could make an appointment. He informed me that the Saturday appointments were full for the next 4-5 weeks! They are popular.

The post office was still pretty empty, a few people arrived also asking about passports and they didn't have appointments either. We wait as he goes to get the appointment book. As he comes back, he says "We are going to try to squeeze you in. Don't say anything, because we can get into trouble." We filled the new forms, took Mason back for new pictures (they actually turned out decent), spent $100 in all, and we were done! As we left, the line was 15-20 people long, I guess we lucked out.

Only 10 days later, Mason's passport arrived in the mail. He is ready to get his first stamp in a couple of months.