This is the story of my passport. It's not a very nice story, and it's not even entertaining.
On March 25th, we went to the courthouse with all my papers. For whatever reason, they refused to process the application and insisted that we mail everything into the National Passport Center in New Hampshire, which we did that afternoon. When we arrived home, to our horror, we realized that the second of two pages documenting my legal name change didn't make it into the envelope. We called to find out how to send the missing page, and were told to wait for a letter with specific instructions. Until the letter came, there was nothing we could do. It took a month for the letter to arrive, and of course we sent the final paper immediately. It was April 27th.
I was also told a few times that due to my concern, I could make an appointment at the Houston Agency, which may or may not have any way of contacting the New Hampshire Agency. It is 2015, and phones were invented in 1876. In the case of a Houston appointment, I would have to fill out three separate applications because nobody knows which of the three would be appropriate. One of these applications would claim a "missing passport," rendering the first useless. I would also need to bring a passport photo, a birth certificate, a copy of my license, proof of travel, a check for $195, an application number, a confirmation number for making the appointment, and the name change documents that were sitting on some asshole's desk in my application. Also, no matter which course of action I attempted, "nothing was guaranteed." It was up to me to cancel all the effort of the previous application with little hope for Houston, which was a pretty dreary option. I tried to schedule that appointment anyway, not having any idea of what else to do, and the first available appointment was on May 27th.
My pointless phone calls to the passport agency soon became an all consuming activity. On the 19th, after going through this gruelling procedure yet again, I was connected with a supervisor who "sent a note" to the New Hampshire office with additional proof of travel. Although it is impressive that some form of electronic messaging is available to these people, that attempt did absolutely nothing. I called once more the night before we needed my passport at 21:30 Eastern Time, half an hour before the office closed. As usual, all my papers were there, my payment had come in, and there was simply nothing anybody was ever going to do about it. Overnight shipping won't get a package from New Hampshire to Texas on the same day. We were doomed.
Due to sheer panic and stress, I called my piano professor, Dr. Betty Mallard, and told her that I wouldn't be able to make our lesson on the 20th. She told the story to her husband, Dr. Harry Mallard, who thought it would be a good idea for us to look up our congress representative and ask for help. It was such a long shot on such short notice, but George and I had nowhere else to turn. Strangely enough, George happens to be a good friend of an Austin congressman's son-in-law, so we asked them for help very late in the evening of the 19th. We were told to sign a release of information form, fax it to a person who works for the congressman, write the story up in an email, and hope for the best. We did.
The first thing in the morning of the 20th, we called the person who works for the congressman. She had already made a few phone calls, and the New Hampshire office had told her that they "Had finished the passport, but the mail hadn't picked it up." I can only assume that after hanging up the phone, New Hampshire actually got my passport into the system to cover themselves. Now that my passport had been completed, we could get it printed in Houston with a special "congressional appointment." We were in the car by 9:00, at the building by 12:00, and the passport was in our hands by 15:00. We were home by 18:00 to start packing. It had taken a nine hour emergency trip and an Act of Congress, but we had my passport. Thank goodness for the Mallards. Thank goodness that the congressman's office was so willing to help us out. We couldn't believe it. In Houston, we were informed that the New Hampshire office had been told to hold the first passport, which of course wasn't a problem, since they had never put it in the mail in the first place.
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