Sunday, April 02, 2006

One Step Closer to Paradise, Just don’t Smile About It

About three years ago I got the impending order from my boss, “go get your passport, you’re probably going to India.” I went to a local shipping/mail service-type bureau, the type that are in a strip mall located next to a Supercuts or Radio Shack and got my picture taken. At the time nobody said anything was said when the picture was taken, just a quick click and off I went. I never got to use the passport. I ended up going only to Canada (where you don’t need a passport). I ended up taking a different job.

Fast forward to today and all of us were in the same place where I got my picture taken so that Aimee and Jill could get their pictures taken for their passports. For some time now we have been talking about going on vacation. We’ve been talking about going someplace far away, someplace that there is no cellphone reception no calls from our jobs. We decided to go to Tahiti. In a long list of preparations for the trip, getting the passports for the girls was one of the tasks that we had to get done right away.



Jill was the first to sit. “Smile,” I tell her.

“You’re not suppose to smile for your passport pictures, it’s forbidden,” stated the clerk.

“Will the authorities from other countries see that you are smiling and arrest you for being, happy, healthy and an overfed American?” I ask.

“No, because it distorts your face”

“So does the 50 pounds of fat on my face, so when did smiling or not matter?” I reply.

She giggles smugly half igmoring my reply and takes the picture.



Upon seeing the pictures, I am kind of disappointed that both Jill and Aimee look so solem. Aimee looks like Tuesday from the Addams Family.



I guess that they forgot to read me the rules when they took my picture back in 2002.

Now no one will recognize me because in the picture on my passport I broke the rules, I am smiling and I am grossly overweight looking like Pugsly in a green polo shirt.

4 comments:

OKDad said...

That mugshot should not only get you barred from entering any civilized country, but also from reentering ours as well.

Mine is much, much worse. If number of chins were gold, I'd be one of Trump's ex-wives.

Isn't it great that we get to keep those passports for 10 years.

Kenn said...

For some reason the place where I had my last passport photo taken had a camera mounted on a tripod. I should have remembered but I only flashed back to my first college ID photo years ago at ASU when it was too late. The college camera tripod only went up high enough to comfortable take snaps of someone six feet or shorter. I, at 6’ 4’’, had to scrunch down to get my mug completely in the mug shot. When I got my ID I looked like the starting defensive guard for some high school team from the Deep South. It wasn’t that I looked like a redneck; I didn’t have a neck at all. My current passport looks like the older version of that no neck football player, only older, greyer and certainly tired

Kenn said...

Oh, by the way, Kurt is right.

I wouldn't let back in the country either.

Elvis McFatPants said...

I believe that the same technology that is used for Driver's Licence photos is also used to create passport photos. Any which way you slice it, it still comes out butt ugly.