The Dog ate my passport
A dream wedding as the sun sets on the beautiful shores of the Mediterranean and a warm breeze blows in from the sea… It doesn’t get much more romantic than that. To get to the Mediterranean, though, you need a passport. Donato Frattaroli and Magda Mazri had all the elaborate wedding plans made for a year. They had the trips lined up for the parents and the guests for this beautiful intercontinental experience. The couple has been planning their wedding ever since their engagement: It has taken years, everything was finally in order: the venue in Italy, the catering, the guests… Surely, it was going to be perfect. The couple clearly like reaching significant relationship milestones abroad. When they got engaged a few years ago, the Boston couple was in Mexico.
On August 17, Donato and Magda went to Boston city hall to acquire their marriage license and letter of intent. When they got back home for the night, they realized that Chickie, their golden retriever, had decided to have a special dinner as well. She was chowing down on Frattaroli’s passport. Panicked, the couple rushed to pull the vital identification document out of Chickie’s chompers. “When you first looked at the passport, it didn’t look like it was super damaged,” Mazri told NBC Boston. Then, they opened the passport. We can only imagine the panic that ensued. “It was like every important page. Like all of his personal information — completely torn up, his picture page was torn up, the barcode on the back of the passport was torn up,” Magda explained.
Now, the couple is scrambling to find some loophole in the system to get an emergency passport replacement for Donato. The express passport service is 7 to 9 weeks, the couple’s flight to Italy is next Friday. Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department is currently so backed up on passport applications that getting a new passport in two weeks is virtually impossible. They have talked to their Congressman and one Senator and report the officials have been very helpful, but they still do not have the passport and the plane leaves Friday. “I’m not allowing myself to even think of Plan B. There’s no other option for me,” said Magda. “We are going to Italy on Friday, one way or the other.” (They made it.)
Show me your papers
Putin is going through passport control. He’s asked:
– “Final destination?”
– “Kiev”
– “Occupation?”
– “Yes.”
If you look like your passport photo,
You probably aren’t well enough to travel.
The passport control line I was waiting in grew longer as the only clerk tried to understand a man was carrying on a monologue in Spanish. The frazzled clerk looked desperately for someone who could translate. Finally, a bilingual employee appeared, took care of the transaction and the clerk sighed with relief. He called the next young lady approached, smiled warmly and said, “Bonjour.”
The TSA guy looked at my driver’s license, looked at me, and looked at his my driver’s license again. He started to turn to get his supervisor. I said, “If you want, I’ll put my glasses on, I have them with me.” He looked bewildered, but he cleared me through all by himself.
Now I understand the whole Superman / Clark Kent thing.
November 13 Birthdays
1980 – Monique Coleman, 1959 – Tracy Scoggins, 1989 – Candice Harris, 1963 – Julia Michaels
1958 – Greg Abbott, 1970 – Gerard Butler, 1967 – Steve Zahn, 1960 – Niel Flynn