Picking up the mail yesterday evening I found, amongst the bills and Christmas cards, a priority envelope from the U.S. government containing my new passport.
I don’t know what number this one is, but I do know I’ve had a passport since 1968, when, as a junior in high school, I went on an Easter trip to Italy with the Latin Clubs of New Jersey. This is the first one I renewed online – a surprisingly easy process – and the first one that carries a picture of me without my glasses. (Seeing the mug shot again, I was reminded of the wag who said that if people really looked like their passport photos, nobody should be allowed to travel.) Happily, like my driver’s license, which also shows me bereft of spectacles – what I think of as an instance of facial nudity – it’s a document that only people who don’t know me will see, officials in uniforms who, hopefully, will give it only a cursory glance.
