On Passports and Early Bedtimes

On Friday Denis and I took CootieGirl to the passport office so she could get her passport for our trip to England in April (fortunately, despite the government shutdown, passports are still being processed). Since she is a minor, both Denis and I had to appear with her to provide our joint parental approval for her to obtain the passport.  Denis took a long-overdue PTO day on Friday and I let the kids skip school (it was a half day and all they’d be doing was watching movies because it was the last day of the semester and exams were over).  I took some PTO in the afternoon and so the three of us were able to head down to the Clerk of Court’s passport office.

As we were walking in, Denis realized he didn’t have his driver’s license on him – we had put it on our printer/scanner at home to make a copy to submit with the passport paperwork, and neither of us had retrieved it after it was scanned.  I told him he had to have it to show proof of his identity, but we opted to walk in to the passport office and see how crowded it was. When we walked in, the waiting area was filled with parents and their children, and we were asked to take a number.  Our number was 517.  They were on 492.

It was going to be a long wait.

Denis immediately left to drive home to get his license, and CG and I began to wait.

At first the numbers went slowly.  In the first 15 minutes it only went up to 494.  After 30 minutes it was at about 500.  Then suddenly the numbers began zooming.  504. 507. 510.  I realized that the reason it was zooming was because a lot of people had apparently bailed on waiting, which meant our number was going to be called very soon. After 40 minutes they were up to 515, and I texted Denis in a panic.

“515!!!!!”

He responded that he was five minutes out.

Two minutes later, our number came up.

“Are both parents here?” the official asked.

“Um, my husband is parking the car,” I fibbed.

She had me make some corrections on the form, she took CG’s picture, I continued to stall and make small talk hoping I wasn’t obvious about my attempts to delay.

Finally, Denis walked in with a flourish and gave the official his driver’s license.  At that point we quickly finished all the paperwork for both Denis (he was renewing his passport as well) and CG, and wrote out the checks for various fees (yep, we still have a checkbook – we’re Luddites, I guess).

As we walked out I said to CG, “We should celebrate you becoming an international traveler!  Wanna go to Outback?”

CG immediately said yes (Outback is her favorite restaurant).  We got home around 4 p.m. and we decided to go ahead out and have an early dinner instead of possibly being caught up in a Friday night dinner crowd.  I had her drive (more learner’s permit practice!) and we arrived around 4:30 p.m.

Y’all, that restaurant was empty.  The only other people there were oldsters out for their pre-dinner hour dinnertime.  We were in and out very quickly – by the time finished our meal the non-oldsters started showing up at the normal dinner hour.

We laughed about the fact that we had an early bird dinner, but by 7:30 p.m. I was so dang tired.  And I came to the realization that this is why old timer’s go to bed so early.  By eating dinner at 4:30 p.m. their internal clocks think that 7:30 p.m. is much later than it really is, and tells them to go to bed.  And this is why they are up at 4 a.m.  If they kept everything at a normal time.  Dinner at 6 p.m., bedtime at 10 p.m., up at 6 a.m. they would be on the same schedule as everyone else (give or take 30 minutes here and there).

So what did I do?  I went to bed at 7:30 p.m.!  And proceeded to sleep for 12 hours.  Saturday morning I woke up at 7:30 a.m. bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Maybe the oldsters are on to something (other than the whole “getting up at 4 a.m.” thing).