The Tractor Ate my License

Likely excuse, right?! Remember we traveled on September 11th. Well, we really had to cross our t's and dot our i's before we got on the plane that day.

It was 9/11. It was a Tuesday. We were flying to Boston. And the sky was blue and crisp, just like Sept. 11th, 2001. While security was strict, it was predictable. And this time we used our passports.

A week ago, when we flew to Boston for the consultation, Chris had a panic attack in the airport. We had checked in, printed our boarding passes and were standing in the security line. He opens up his wallet and looks up at me with wide eyes. He only had half a license. It's his only real form of identification.

So, about a month ago, Chris was mowing the lawn on our 7 foot ride-on mower. It's loud when it's running and it vibrates a lot. Chris likes to have a beer while he's mowing the lawn and we tried at one point to mount a cup holder on the tractor to hold a Miller Light. While it was a good idea, the vibrations from the tractor just made the beer super foamy.

The same type of vibrations did a number on Chris' wallet. The bumping around shimmied his wallet out of his pocket and it fell on the lawn. Chris saw it hit the grass and then one second later, he ran over it. The blades of the 7 foot tractor did a number on everything in this wallet. The AMEX card was shredded. His health insurance card - gone. The YMCA membership tag - in bits. The cash was wrapped up in dollar order - the twenties in the middle, the fives and ones on the outside. The singles were shredded - pieces of currency confetti all over the lawn. The fives were cut in 4 piece strips. The twenties split in half. I was thrilled to match up some of the twenties with their other half according to the serial numbers. Nothing a little scotch tape couldn't fix. I traded them in for undamaged 20's at Turkey Hill. They didn't care about taking half a twenty. So we didn't lose too much.

But that driver's license was a problem. Chris would have had to go to the DMV and get a replacement license. God knows how much fun the DMV is. Needless to say, Chris didn't get a new one ... and started panicking when we were in the security line.

Thankfully, he looks like an upstanding citizen and pulled out his Lancaster General Hospital ID badge. It has his smiling face and says Physician in big letters. Between that, a funny story about a tractor eating his license and a kind smile, TSA let him through. Thank God.