passportGetting a passport for your children makes Putin, Castro, Kim Song Il and Dentists seem like a walk in the park, a day at the beach or anything that could actually be called pleasant.

Our first experience with a passport for our son, five years ago, had both my wife and me dancing with apoplexy.  We went to the post office, where, after waiting for 20 minutes with no information, we were told we had to make an appointment three months later. Pity the poor postmaster that day.

My son’s head snapped back and forth Grand Slam style as first my wife and then I worked him over.  Didn’t help, but we felt better and we visited the postmaster in recovery.

My younger daughter’s first passport was less traumatic than our previous experience.   If you saw her original, “Annie,” style picture, you would have been laughing still.  This time, however, included some unexpected difficulties.

The pictures from CVS created daughter trauma which I (being male) still don’t understand.  We had to take two sets of photographs, neither of which could be used for passports because she had her headband on.  That meant another trip to CVS the next day because we actually had a 10:30 appointment.

I was in charge of the forms and getting the birth certificate from the bank.  The bank part was easy.

As an aside, reading the state department website and figuring out we needed her Birth Certificate wasn’t all that clear.  Her old passport should have worked, theoretically.  I figured out that her photographs needed to be re-taken from meticulously combing the site and sifting through the FAQ’s.

It was dumb luck and pure fear that made us bring her certificate though.

I am a leftie.  I am obsessive compulsive and ADD.  I learned to type in high school—not keyboard; type, out of pure desperation that someone could read my assignments.

Why on earth my wife put me in charge of the forms is still unclear to me?  It was certainly unclear to the Asian clerk at the post office who made my  wife re-do part of one form and  another whole page.  “Your handwriting messy.  Nobody can read,” had me laughing.  That, and “Did you use black pen?” four times had me smiling constantly; I mean we were sailing.

Pictures, drivers licenses copied, both parents there, debit card for payment.  What could go wrong to slow down the process?

Copy of birth certificate?  Had it.  “No name.  They can’t read name.  Why did you bring with no name?”  Printer problems at home don’t impress postal clerks doing passport applications.

Fine.  We paid a dollar for a copy. Getting ready to go, reviewing all the paperwork, smiling and happy and then the clerk looks at the bottom of one application.

“Where’s the last line?  Can’t read last line.  Why you no print last line,” she said as she grabbed another form, tore off the second page and sent us back to re-do it.  Truthfully, and I believed her, she said that the state department would send back the form if they couldn’t read the last line on the page.  Considering it was internal information that the state department should fill in, I wondered why they couldn’t figure out their own form anyway?

We did it.  We got the passport application in.  Rather than exuberant and overjoyed, we felt like we had just been through a grinder.

I think Dentists should be able to do passport applications.  Save a lot of time and you wouldn’t notice the extra pain with a little Novocaine.

Dear Reader: Marc is headed to Paris this summer with his entire family, including his mother.