New Passport

I received a puzzling, official-looking envelope in the mail today. In it, to my surprise, was my new passport. I’d renewed it long enough ago that it wasn’t at the front of my mind, but not so long ago that I’d begun to worry about it.

I’ll miss my old passport, which had some really cool stamps (Mongolia!), not to mention a very fresh-looking photo of me taken 10 years ago. But the new passport appears to be made a little more durably, and has some interesting new design features. The frontispiece has a quote from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a facing page reproduces the preamble to the constitution, for the benefit of citizens who didn’t commit it to memory watching Saturday-morning television as children. Later pages have watermarks including patriotic quotes from all the usual suspects and some I didn’t see coming, like the Mohawk Thanksgiving address.

Best of all, the last page notes that, “This document contains sensitive electronics.” I’ve been chipped! Knowing this makes allows me to work up a good head of liberal paranoia while still feeling like I’ve got the latest gadget everyone’s talking about, a real Bay Area perfecta.

My new photo’s not great. I think I look a little haggard (especially compared to my old passport picture). But doesn’t everyone look a little rough after an international flight? I expect to breeze through customs for the next decade.