"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange

Friday, December 14, 2007

welcome home

Somewhere between Brussels and Chicago, this trip leader lost her passport. Fortunately, I was carrying a copy of it in my waist pack. When I went through customs in Chicago, that copy helped let me pass. But so did this. It was a brief q & a held with the custom's agent, and it went something like this:

Agent: Where were you on November 22, 1963?

Me: Oh, that was the day JFK was shot, wasn't it? I was in Mrs. Huber's fourth grade classroom.

(In my travel haze and state of exhaustion, I thought he was telling me he was also from Lexington and that he knew me from elementary school.)

Me: Why? Where were you?

Agent: I was in Mrs. Hopkin's class.

(I couldn't recall a teacher by that name at Cassidy Elementary School. So now I was confused.)

Me: Why do you want to know - are you from Lexington?

(Like, am I supposed to remember you?)

Agent: Any American citizen can remember where they were on that day. Now I can confirm that you are one.

Then he added, "Welcome home."

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