The Worst Picture of Me Ever Taken

This is my Dutch residency card, which will be in my wallet for the next five years. The picture would be more appropriate on a wanted poster. I look like the sort of guy who runs amok in a post office or comes unhinged and visits the neighbors with a garden implement. Let me tell you how this picture happened.

The day we moved here we flew from Chicago to Amsterdam. Our dear friends Chuck and Tim Ferguson volunteered to drive us to Chicago so we could have a direct flight to reduce the time Maury the dog would have to be in a crate. So, on that June day, after a solid four hours of sleep, we got up (we’d been up late the night before, trying to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything), finished the last few details, and the Fergusons picked us and all of our luggage up for the almost four hour drive to O’Hare. I wasn’t worried about the short night – that would just make it easier to sleep on the plane. Everything went fine, but since it was a warm day, the airline folks told us to wait a while before we gave them Maury, and because of that we were the last people on the plane.

The anxiety I was feeling about picking up my life at age 50 and moving to another continent was balanced by the excitement I felt about a great surprise waiting for Gretchen on the plane. Through some fluke, when I went to check-in online the day before on the Northwest web site, I was asked if I wanted to choose seats. We were traveling on a KLM flight on a Northwest ticket, and usually when doing that you don’t know where you are going to sit until you get to the airport. But this one time the web site asked me if I wanted to choose seats. I said yes, and then it showed me all the seats on the airplane. All the seats – starting at row one. Being no fool, I clicked on the first row of World Business Class and it gave me those two seats. Now I have enough experience flying overseas to know it is impossible to get seats in World Business Class without spending both money and frequent flyer miles. This was truly a fluke, and I jumped on it. It would be my first time sitting up front.

I decided not to tell Gretchen, because deep in my heart I couldn’t actually believe it would happen. I carry around way too much mid-western guilt and shame to let myself think we were worthy of World Business Class. I didn’t want her to be disappointed when the airline agent looked us over and said, “No, I don’t think so.” After all, my travel guru Don Hux had found these tickets from an airline wholesaler. The advertised price on the web was $2300 for a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. We bought ours for $400. (You know that thing about the airline guaranteeing their lowest fares are found on their web site? Well…we beat their best fare by $3800 for two tickets.)

Thanks to this web site fluke, we were going to sit in World Business Class on two one-way tickets bought wholesale. When we checked in the ticket agent said, “That’s odd … you are sitting up front on economy tickets.” This was the moment of truth! But he simply shrugged his shoulders, and that was that. We were in!!! I was feeling so great. As we entered the plane, Gretchen turned right to head toward the poor, tired huddled masses yearning to be free, but I gently and lovingly said, “No, no, my pet, this way” and proceeded to march proudly into the promised land of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. This was going to be the best ocean crossing we’d ever done. We had so much legroom Shaquille O’Neal could have laid down in front of us. We were soon airborne, and then we were served a lovely dinner. “A little more wine, sir?” “Don’t mind if I do.” Now it was time to relax with a book or a movie and then we’d lay our wonder seats down and close our eyes and wait for the Sandman to visit World Business Class. Next thing we’d know we’d be waking up refreshed as we circled Amsterdam.

But my somnolent dreams were rudely interrupted when Gretchen said, “There’s something wrong with my seat. It won’t recline.”

“Well,” I said, “you probably don’t know how to do it, this being your first time in World Business Class and all. Let me show you.” Like I knew. I tried, and couldn’t get my seat to recline either. We weren’t the only ones. Turns out the power for the seats wasn’t working in the entire World Business Class section. What was this, some sort of cruel joke courtesy of the peasants in steerage? Eventually the flight crew came through and manually reclined our seats – about 30 degrees. The foot rests wouldn’t come out. That whole thing about the special seat that reclines to horizontal so you’re more in a bed than a seat? That didn’t happen. We were more or less vertical. I started to think of how I could complain to the airline. They should give me World Business Class for life. But then I remembered this was the seat they had mistakenly given me for a ticket I paid 20% of the published rate for. I didn’t see my complaint going far.

Well, we could make up for a non-reclining seat just by shutting our eyes and sleeping. When life gives you lemons, just make a little lemonade, you know? But when it was nice and dark and slumber time, the toddler in the seat across the aisle from us started screaming. Babies cry. Toddlers scream. She just started wailing and wouldn’t stop. She screamed like someone standing on the runway trying to be heard above the roar of the jet engines. I put earplugs in and noise-cancelling headphones on, but her screaming was the sound equivalent of an armor-piercing bullet. And it never stopped. One hour, two hours, three hours. Every once in a while she’d sort of wind down, and then all you had to do was count to five and she was off again. She was wailing like someone having her teeth drilled without Novocain as beavers gnawed at her flesh. At one point I opened an eye and saw the child was asleep and still screaming. How did she do that? Why couldn’t I sleep and listen to her in my sleep? Finally, magically, she stopped. Thank you, God. I looked at my watch, which I had set to Amsterdam time. It was 4:21. At 4:45, exactly 24 minutes later, the flight crew turned on the cabin lights and started serving breakfast. Neither Gretchen nor I had slept.

Our plane landed about 6am. We got our luggage, got our dog (who was very, very happy to see us) and walked through customs unimpeded – I thought four giant suitcases, two carry-ons, a squirming dog and large dog crate might draw someone’s interest, but it didn’t. Our friend Miquel was waiting to pick us up. We needed to stop at our immigration attorney’s office in Amsterdam to get some important papers – but we had to wait a while for the office to open. So, we had our second breakfast of the morning and then went to the lawyer’s.

Because we wanted to get things rolling as soon as possible, the lawyer had made an appointment for us to be at the immigration offices in The Hague the next morning. So we had to pick up the forms from his office and then we needed one more thing: passport photos taken to Dutch specifications. The lawyer told us not to get them done in the US, because they would be rejected. The Dutch have very specific rules that are not the same as the US rules. Different size pictures, no smiling, no glasses, etc.

So, after going to the law office and getting our papers, we headed out for the hour drive to Dordrecht. By then it was mid-morning, and we had an appointment to meet our house rental agent and landlord at one o’clock. We made it to Dordrecht in time, unloaded all the luggage from the van Miquel had borrowed for the occasion, returned it to its owner, retrieved Miquel’s car, and then headed to our new house to get our keys and sign our lease. At this point it was two in the afternoon. Miquel turned to us and said, “We need to go get your pictures taken.”

And so this is how I look when you add the stress of starting a new life to not having slept (or showered or shaved) for a few days. I know the raw material isn’t much to work with, but this picture is brutal. And now I have it on my residency card in my wallet for the next five years. I look like Charles Manson with Bozo the Clown’s hair. My eyes are forced wide open because all I wanted to do was shut them and go to sleep.

Gretchen’s picture is similarly awful, and out of love and respect for her I will not post it on the internet. But I will tell you this – and I am not making this up – after we submitted Gretchen’s photo to immigration we got a letter saying she needed to show them proof that she had insurance for psychological hospitalization.