Passports

I was delayed in Rite-Aid yesterday because a gentleman ahead of me in line was asked to provide ID. He was Irish, so he handed over an Irish passport. I've been around passports enough that they don't scare me, but it was a big problem for the nervous-looking man at the register. Probably within two years of my age, this guy looked like he had been promoted once and subsequently grew a beard, as though the scant covering of hair on his face might somehow confer upon him the authority and competence that he was previously lacking. He was doing his best to look put-together -- his shirt was tucked in, his pants were pleated and belted, and as I walked by he welcomed me to Rite-Aid and wished me a good day with more gusto than I would have expected from such a small man-- but it didn't quite come together. His pants were too big, his eyes were tired and shifty, and his beard looked more like something somebody left in the bathtub than a noble facial pelt. Nor had the beard endowed him with the knowledge of how to enter a passport in the system. He held it like a venomous snake.

His eyes flitted between the passport and the computer screen. "I don't... I don't know how to enter a passport." His face was a lightshow of the panopoly of human emotions: fear of the unknown document, anger at the injustice of the world, growing hysteria.

Over the intercom: "May! May. I don't know how to enter passports in the system." She came to the desk and with the other pharmacist, the three of them began searching the computer. They found the right button, I guess, because the man started filling out the data. Hi s voice finally cracked, "What number do I put? I don't know how to read passports!!!"

Jesus, it's not Linear B.

[What struck me about the situation was how easily the man's veneer of almost-put-togetherness was shattered and how foreign and viscerally terrifying something like a passport can be here.]