People Are Good

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. We took the afternoon off and had a fabulous time doing only those things he really wanted to do: Booksmith date, late lunch at Zaftig's, writing utensil shopping extravaganza, Happy Hour with good friends, late evening trip to the Apple store to play with the iPad, ice-cream in lieu of nightcap. It was a huge success; the Hubs was very happy, as he deserves to be. He is a very special man; we loves him sooooooooooooooo much (*armsstretchedoutwide*).

When we came home we found evidence of a miracle. Let me explain:

The Hubs' driver's license expired yesterday. He's known this for, uhm, several months. On Thursday at last he decided to go to the DMV (or Registry of Motor Vehicles, as it is called in Mass.). After all, having a valid driver's license is important this weekend, since we're expecting our favorite aunts to visit, and we'd like to drive them around. (In their car, naturally, as we don't have a car. If we had a car, he probably would have taken care of the license a wee bit earlier.)

So, the Hubs collected his three forms of ID and proof of residence, stuffed everything into the pocket of his fleece vest, and off he went on his bicycle. Now, in the past I caught him several times running around town with the zipper of said pocket unzipped, and I asked him on numerous occasions to please zip the darn thing, so that he wouldn't lose his wallet, phone, keys, and glasses. (If you're wondering about the vest: my husband is a mathematician. That makes him inseparable from his fleece vest. It's all he ever wears.) He swears he zipped the zipper, and yet, by the time he arrived at the DMV he had lost his passport.

Passport. Let's say it again. Pass-port. (He had brought it as one form of ID.)

Have I mentioned that we're going to Europe soonish? Like, next Tuesday?*

After the first emergency call to moi, the Hubs walked back the way he came to check streets and sidewalks for his passport. Nothing. He then researched how to get a new passport and how to get it fast. Four forms of ID are required, one of them a state issued driver's license. If you don't have that, you need to bring along two people who have known you for at least two years and who must sign an affidavit that you are who you claim you are. Because the Hubs started working in Boston almost exactly two years ago and the few people he's known that long are his boss, her secretary, and our crazy neighbors, and because he didn't want to drag either of them to Government Center, he really needed to get a new driver's license before applying for the expedited passport. (I, the wife, don't count as witness.)

So yesterday, on his birthday, he collected his three forms of ID and proof of residence, stuffed everything into the pocket of his fleece vest, zipped the zipper, and off he went on his bicycle. He waited for two hours, and voilà, he received... a paper slip. On which it read that it was not a valid license, but only a notification that he had applied for one and that the real license would be in the mail within seven days. He was dumbstruck. Seven days? (In Miss., the place of Hubs' origin and issuing state of his last license, you get the card on the spot.) Dumbstruck I said he was. Perhaps he was a little angry too. And a bit desperate about how to make it all work so that he would have a passport by the time he hit the airport.

We were going crazy for about one hour trying to figure out how to get the Hubs an appointment at the expedited passport office without a valid driver's ID. Then we postponed worrying so that we'd enjoy his birthday. Now I fast forward. Several hours later, slightly tipsy and full of ice-cream, we arrived home, opened the door, and found ... drum roll... his passport. In our entrance hall. Slipped there underneath the door. But how? By whom?

Folded into the passport was a police printout with the Hubs' data. I had speculated on Thursday that whoever finds the passport may turn it in to the police, and that the police surely were able to find out where we lived. But I was thinking like a German: at home everyone needs to register with the town of residence, and when we move from place A to place B we need to notify the registries of both places A and B. It's easy to track us down! (The Americans I've talked to think this is totally crazy and that it violates at least five constitutional rights. To me it makes perfect sense; I don't find anything odd about it at all.) Here, of course, records aren't updated. When the Hubs received his old driver's license he was still in college, and the address he provided was his parents' home address. The Hubs thus concluded that even if someone found the passport and dropped it off with the police, the only address that would show up was his parents' address in Mississippi.

Instead of arriving in Miss. per mail, the passport was hand delivered to our house in Mass.

Really, two miracles happened: First, someone found his passport, wanted to do good and took it to the police. (The miracle: People wanting to be good and going out of their way to help someone else with finding lost property!) Second, instead of doing this on Thursday, they waited just long enough so that by the time the police looked up the Hubs, he had already been to the DMV here and changed his address for the new license.

Ah, a true life story which it is no fib to end with "and they lived happily ever after," and all thanks to the kindness of strangers!


*That's a small lie added for effect. While I am leaving on Tuesday, the Hubs doesn't actually leave till a short while later.