You want what information for a Passport?

For years, I have wanted to get a passport but obviously, I haven’t wanted to badly enough. I have found and maybe created so many excuses not to…then, eventually, I forget about it.

Recently, I have again decided to get one. The excitement this time was overwhelming and I had to have one. I already had a destination in mind…in fact, I picked out many destinations and I wanted to go NOW!

I got on the website and after a long, tedious, time-consuming search; I finally found the form I needed. I didn’t even look at it on the computer screen, I just hit the print box on the screen and my printer was obliged to register my command.

When I looked at the printed form, I was flabbergasted at what it was asking…who knew I would have to know any of this information??? My mother’s maiden name… got it! Father’s name… got it! Place of birth for mother, a little tougher but I got it. Father’s place of birth? A little tougher but once I sent away for and received my long form of birth certificate, I had that too. It was interesting that on my birth certificate, there is no time of birth. Did they not record that back when I was born??? No sense of time back then apparently. I digress.

I had to wonder how someone born in New Mexico meets with someone born in Missouri back then. How were they in the same place at the same time? What happened to get them there? How did they travel so far? Where did they meet? My father was 11 years older than my mother and I can’t help but wonder how well that went over with family. All questions that will go unanswered since anyone who might know those answers has long been gone.

Back to the #$%&! form. Seems fairly easy, so far. Now, that I have received my long-form birth certificate which I had waited two and one half weeks to receive. Now, comes the hard part. Being divorced more than 20 years ago and getting rid of the divorce papers more than 5 years ago, I now need them for a passport. Perfect! I am required to have my former husband’s place of birth, his birth date, and when we were married and divorced. This information will be tougher to find so I will need to go to the county in which we were divorced and pay someone to find these papers for me so I can fill out the paper for a passport. Can you believe this? The government keeps records on all of us and I have to pay someone in the government to find this information for me so I can obtain a government issued passport in the U.S.

This is just plain SILLY! I may be able to obtain all the information required on the form before I have to take my walker with me...then again, maybe not! Wish me luck!!!