What does it take to leave this country anyway?

I'd been waiting to write this, because I wanted to do it after I'd submitted my application for a passport. Then I could be all excited about my impending ability to legally travel the world. However, the best laid plans...

You need a few things to submit a passport application, and that info is pretty easy to find. Hell, just type "Passport" into a Yahoo or Google search, and the first or second thing that comes up is the State Department site for acquiring a passport. You need the completed application, which you can download from the site. You need two identical pictures of a specific size, which I had gotten for free from AAA, a nice perk of membership. You need $97 for the fees and charges. Check, I had that. You need a drivers license to prove identity, and a birth certificate to prove citizenship. (There are alternatives for these last two, but they were the easiest and most logical choices for me.)

I had all this stuff, or so I thought. So yesterday at lunch, I drive over to the Dedham post office with my folder full of everything I'll need. Wait in the post office line. When it's finally my turn, I'm then informed that my birth certificate is no good. Apparently it's a copy, (which I did know), and didn't have the embossed and raised seal of the City Clerk. Well, crap. Way to waste my lunch hour. So, after work, I drive over to the Quincy City Clerk's office and get a new copy of my birth certificate, all legit and legal, at a cost of $8. I should be good to go now, right?

Well, apparently not, as you also need impeccable timing. I walk over to the Quincy post office after getting my new birth certificate, and wait in a longer post office line. Finally comes my turn, I walk to the window. "I'd like to submit an application for a passport please," I say.

"Sorry, passports close at four," she tells me.

I ignore this anarcharism of the English language and check my phone (clock). Yep, almost five. It appears that someone, some higher power perhaps, doesn't want me leaving the country. But I'm stubborn and fully intend to thwart such complications. And, if and when I ever make it abroad, and on the off chance get blown up by some terrorist bomb or somesuch, I'll just have to shrug it off and laugh at myself when God says, "Dude, I tried to tell you."