THREE THINGS I LEARNED TODAY AT THE PASSPORT OFFICE
Pursuant to my coming crossing of the mighty U.S./Canada border, today at long last I was able to make my way to the front of the line successfully in order to obtain a U.S. Passport. This was my fifth or sixth attempt, plagued by the erratic hours the office is open, long lines, and inconvenient lunches. I thought I would share with you, O World Beyond This Flat-Screen Monitor, three things which I learned today:
ONE: If you want to fit in at the Post Office, and especially while waiting for an hour in the passport line, by all means hook up your phone to your ear, stare off into space disinterestedly, and just yammer away the whole time. Please. If you really want to fade into the background, liberally season your conversation with expletives and personal details from your life. Occasionally threaten whomever it is you are talking to.
Some people find this sort thing to be rude; other, even less enlightened people might become enraged to be subjected to this kind of audio onslaught. Clearly, these people who are so sensitive are throwbacks to a time before we all carried telephones around with us every where we went. If one of them complains bitterly to you, just nod and wait them out... soon they will be as inured to this sort of public nuisance as you are.
TWO: If you are fortunate like me, and get a sweet woman who loves it when you call her ma'am and say please and thank you, then you can make the most ridiculous faces for your passport photo and she will only say, "Ooh honey, we're still getting a little more glare." "What about now?" "Oh that's better." "Do you think I should smile even bigger?" "Sure, if you want to!"
The little drawing above is pretty much about half as crazy looking as the photo she and I later settled on. I was pretty excited, as I wasted a lot of time in front of the mirror trying to come up with faces I could slip by as my "regular" smile.
If you don't know this already, this is a great lesson: being sweet to people who get pooped on all day will get you pretty much whatever it is that you want. Don't YOU love it when people are sweet to you? Well there you go.
THREE: When I sat down in line and an official told me he estimated it would take me about an hour to get through the line, I was worried that I would easily finish the copy of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto I'd brought, so I tried to read it slowly and really absorb it. When, about 35 minutes later my number got called, I was actually a little disappointed as I was so immersed in the story. I love it! If you're looking for a good manga to read, Pluto has all the earmarks of being great. I'm only a fair-weather fan of Osamu Tezuka (Pluto is a retelling of the "Pluto" storyline from Tezuka's Astro Boy), so a more serious version of a Tezuka story is right up my alley.
Okay, those are my three things! Back to your phone conversations, everyone!