One Girl and a Big World

Welcome back to the blog folks!

Have you ever been in a situation where time seems to be slipping through your fingers while waiting in line? Well, my family has and it has Zootopia movie DMV vibes (be sure to look up a YouTube video for Zootopia DMV so you know what I’m talking about).

It was an early morning in 2017. The sun had not risen yet over Lisbon, Portugal. Where our flight was headed too, I no longer remember (but I believe it was Spain). After checking our baggage in, we passed security only to find an enormous crowd of people lined up. After asking around, my dad figured out the hefty line was for passport control… not good.

My family typically arrives with plenty of time to the airport so we were not too worried… until we realized it was one passport control officer for hundreds of passengers. The line progressed extremely slowly, but it progressed nonetheless. All was good for an hour. The sun still had not risen, and because it was so early, my sleep drowsiness ironically helped the time go by faster.

After an hour and a half of waiting, we were extremely close to our turn for passport control. Only about twenty passengers remained ahead of us. And at that moment, the loud speakers declared that they were issuing the final boarding call for our flight. It was at this point that a sense of urgency kicked in. When we looked at the man doing passport control, his actions made him seem like Flash the sloth from Zootopia. It was unbearable to watch and stress-inducing. Other passengers were also nervous that they were going to miss their flight. Never in my life have I seen passport control take as long as it did that early morning in Portugal.

By what seemed like a miracle sent from God, my family made it to the passport control window. My mom sent my dad to get his passport stamped first. After what seemed like an eternity, the officer let my dad through and my dad took off running to our gate to hold up the plane for the rest of us. My brother followed and once he was cleared, he ran to go find my dad. It was finally my turn and I got a first hand view of a Zootopia DMV moment. The officer took my passport, and slowly flipped its pages until he came to my identification page. With no sense of urgency, he placed my passport on the scanner and waited with a bored attitude for it to clear. Once it cleared, he lifted it off the scanner with a slowness that could kill and flipped once again through my passport to find a place to stamp it. When he finally picked his page, he stamped it and handed it back to me at snails pace. The moment I grabbed my passport, my mom pushed me and basically sent me flying into a run to get to our gate.

I can no longer remember if my brother and dad had boarded the plane but I waited at the gate for my mom and told the gate agent that my mom was coming. To my surprise, the lady said, “Don’t worry about it, you are not the only ones caught up with passport control.” That one passport agent had single-handedly delayed at least three flights with his inward Flash the sloth. My mom made it on time and once we boarded, the plane was cleared for take-off. As we flew out of the airport that day, I remembered the Zootopia film that had come out only one year prior and I laughed at myself because I know knew what the bunny had experienced waiting at the DMV line in the movie (it’s not pleasant y’all lol).

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