It's time for a story about everyone's favorite guy! He's lovable, he's absentminded, he's an all-around good-hearted doofus....he's the Code!
This week we'll revisit an episode from the past. Imagine that it's Christmas time, will you? There are presents under the tree, it's cold outside, the evenings are dark and lend themselves to staying indoors and cuddling near crackling fires. You're probably getting sick of all the radio stations being co-opted by Christmas music. Some of you might be about to go on a holiday vacation. Cody is actually preparing for a holiday trip himself. You see, Cody's lovely wife and in-laws have an uncle who lives (!) in the Cayman Islands. This uncle has very graciously extended an open invite to the family, and so for the past 6 months, Cody has been excitedly awaiting the Christmas trip to Grand Cayman. He's talked about what he'll do, read up on what ocean life can be found in the Cayman coral reefs, and determined at least five different species of fish he will consume. The day approaches, slowly but surely. Finally, after 24 weeks, the vacation day is here! Cody will leave the very next day, early in the morning, to drive to the airport and begin the vacation he's been waiting on for over 168 days.
So, it's 12:30am. We will leave for Dallas (and its requisite international airport) in precisely three hours. Cody decides that right now is probably a good time to start locating his birth certificate.
You see, a birth certificate used to be acceptable documentation for international travel if you were only going so far as Mexico, the Caribbean, or Canada. Not so anymore. Now everyone must have a passport. And they take like, forever to get. So, if you want to travel anywhere internationally in the next year or so, GET ONE NOW. Trust me on this.
Anyway, at the time of our story, a birth certificate would still suffice. And Cody, at 12:30am, the night (or early-morning, depending on how you see it....kinda like glass half-full, half-empty, right?) before we are set to leave for Grand Cayman, is sauntering over to our file cabinet to retrieve his birth certificate. I am all packed up and dozing on the couch, not subscribing to the travel theory that goes something like "If You're Going To Be Leaving Really Early Anyway, Then Just Don't Go To Bed At All The Night Before Because Then It Won't Be So Hard To Wake Up. Besides, You Can Just Sleep On The Plane". I hate that theory. It only makes you more tired. And who can sleep on planes? I never can, unless I decide that I don't care if the stranger next to me sees me drooling down the side window. And I never decide that.
Anyway.
I am sleeping. Cody is locating his birth certificate in the file cabinet. Only he isn't, because the birth certificate is not IN the file cabinet. He looks in the planning desk. Not there. He looks in my underwear drawer, because that is where I tend to hide things that I know I'll need and don't want Cody to lose. Not there, either. At this point, Cody decides to wake me up. "I can't find my birth certificate," he says. "I've looked everywhere." I groan to an awake stance, and look at him incredulously. "You WHAT?" I say. "You've got to be kidding me. You didn't already have it, ready to go?" At this point, Cody is more than likely regretting waking me up at all. As I'm being so, you know. Helpful.
"No. I didn't have it ready to go. Now help me find it. It's 1:30." Now I'm really awake. 1:30?!? We have to leave in like, an hour and a half. Holy crap. A major search ensues. I might mention here, as an aside, that during the Christmas season we were housing our good friends and their two year-old daughter. Who is an incredibly light sleeper. Or, her parents THINK she is. One of those. Anyway, we were having to frantically tear the house apart AND fight all in super-silent whispers.
"How could you dooooo thisssssss?" I hiss, in a whisper.
"I don't knoooow! It was supposssssed to be in the file cabinet - where did YOU put it?" Cody whisper-yells back.
"Where did I put it???? Are you kiddinggggg? Who, between usssss, loossssesssss EVERYTHINGGGG? Where did YOU put it? Think!" I respond, whisperishly.
This line of questioning, by the way, never works. I always try to make Cody think back on where he was, what he was doing the last time he had the Lost Item. I do this because this is how I find things when I have lost them. I can't find my chapstick? Well, let's see, the last time I used it was when I was in the kitchen on the phone with Amy, and we were talking about how ceiling fans dry our throats out and I thought, wow, my throat and lips are dry NOW, and then I grabbed the chapstick out of my purse, used it and set it down....in the candy tray! It's in the candy tray! It's like a fun game. But not to Cody.
"I don't KNOW where I had it lasssst! Who uses a birth certificate? It sssssshould be right here. But it's not. Where did you put it?"
This goes on for the next hour. The house is now a disaster, Cody is still only half-packed, and what does it matter, really, because he isn't going to be able to go anywhere without his birth certificate anyway. We have two more chances at success. The BC could be at his office, or at my store. Why it would be at either of those places I have no idea, but at 2:30am, anything sounds reasonable. We load up our luggage, pray to the travel gods, and set out. BC is MIA in both places of business. Obviously.
It's now 3:15am. We have already called my parents and told them to go ahead without us; we will follow in our own car. We sit in the parking lot of the shopping center that houses my store, and stare straight ahead, blankly.
"Do you think the marriage certificate will work?"
"No."
"Me either."
"If we don't leave now, we'll miss the flight completely."
"Yeah."
We sit like this for maybe 5 minutes. And then start driving to Dallas. The drive is....unpleasant, to say the least. I'll let you imagine what it might be like. And it probably was just like that. Maybe worse.
Arriving at the airport, we are frantic to get to the ticket counter. We've wasted so much time looking for the elusive BC that we are about to miss the checked-luggage cutoff. We explain the situation to the bored-looking ticket agent. We beg for mercy. We show the marriage license. We show Cody's expired passport. I swear that Cody is, in fact, a US citizen. I'll even write a statement, attesting to that, I offer. We ask that she take pity on our souls and please, please allow Cody to board the flight. She responds with this gem:
"You know, after January 6, you won't even be able to travel with a birth certificate. You'll have to have a passport."
Ummm, ok. That was, possibly, the very least helpful thing in to say. We don't HAVE a birth certificate, much less a passport, and informing us to the ins and outs of future travel laws is, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it's just plain robotic and hateful. We say something in this vein, and she responds:
"Sir, I've already told you, you're going to need a new passport or a birth certificate to travel. Ma'am, if you want to get on the plane, you're going to have to go now. The plane is boarding and if I don't check you in now, you won't be able to go either."
This leaves me with the decision I just knew I was going to have. Stay in Dallas with my sadly misinformed and unprepared husband and miss the trip, or leave my husband behind and go. Given the state of mind I was in at the time, you might think the decision would be easy, but still. It's Christmas, and that's my husband. I do love the guy, after all. Fortunately, the decision was made for me, as Cody all but pushed me into the electronic screening line and ran away, yelling over his shoulder that he'd figure something out and catch the next flight, not to worry, and to go. Also, he threatened to kill me if I stayed. So, I went. And, unbeknownst to me, I took the only set of keys to the car with me, effectively leaving Cody stranded in the Dallas airport.
The best part of boarding the plane without Cody was looking at my Dad's face, because if you don't know my Dad, I'll tell you - he doesn't make mistakes. Therefore, he doesn't understand it when other people do. It's kind of like how normal people might look at a hopeless crack-addict. "Where did that poor person go wrong?" we wonder. "How could they let something like that happen to them?" That's how my Dad is when ANYTHING goes wrong.
Cody missed the first two days of the four day vacation. He arrived at the Grand Cayman airport at 11:30pm on a Tuesday night, bedraggled and telling tales of taxi rides to small-town courthouses, struggles with government employees who wanted to be home celebrating the holidays, birth certificates obtained, taxi rides back to the airport, unhelpful ticketing agents, and lines the length of football fields. He actually got ticketed on a flight the morning after we all arrived, but MISSED that flight when he showed up at the airport well before the two-hours-prior suggested time, and found the longest lines he had ever seen before, due to the fact that American had canceled over 600 flights coming and going from the East Coast. He could have done self check-in if he would have had a passport, but since he had a birth certificate only, he had to wait in the ticketing line and have it looked at personally by an agent. You see, passports come with a handy barcode for electronic scanning. Birth certificates, apparently, do not.
I'll bet the best part of missing the SECOND flight was when Cody had to call me and hear my voice when he told me what happened. I don't know if you know my Dad, but I take after him.
You'd think that after something like that, your first priority once you arrived home would be to, I don't know. Obtain a passport? Sadly, Cody did not, and we nearly were not able to go on our upcoming trip (knock on wood, I know...we haven't gotten there yet) because Cody still had not done anything towards getting his passport. He actually had to drive to Houston and jump through about a thousand hoops in order to get the passport office to guarantee his passport would arrive in time for us to leave on our non-refundable plane ride to our non-refundable resort. This Saturday. Yesterday the passport arrived in our mailbox. Wednesday.
So, three days. That's not cutting it too close at all. Not in Cody-world.
This is where you say, "Don't worry, Cody and Kyle are nothing alike."
Posted by: Amy C. | May 17, 2007 at 03:43 PM
My brain... You've broken my brain...
Posted by: Teacher A | May 17, 2007 at 04:09 PM
Poor sweet Cody. He must be the long lost brother of Mr. Half who, bless his heart, is last minute about so many of these kinds of details.
Posted by: wordgirl | May 17, 2007 at 04:39 PM
Don't worry, Amy, Cody and Kyle are exactly alike. But you and I can vacation together.
Posted by: elise | May 17, 2007 at 06:18 PM
It's a husband thing maybe? My husband is being like this about finding a HOME. He is not worrying, he is carrying on as normal, until I suspect, the day before we have to empty some of the packed cardboard boxes and move into them.
Posted by: Helen | May 17, 2007 at 06:21 PM
Oh my. I had anxiety just READING this! I do not handle situations like that very well at all.
Posted by: janet | May 18, 2007 at 12:05 AM
Ho.Ly.CRAP.
You, my dear, are a very patient woman. Thank you for sharing this. It means I could have it far far worse. How do you deal with having to do everything for the guy though? That's what I struggle with. Or, should I just, not?
Posted by: beck | May 18, 2007 at 12:27 AM
I'm getting married three weeks from tomorrow. And we're going to Paris for the honeymoon. And guess who STILL doesn't have passport in hand. Guess what? It's not me! :)
Posted by: Laurie | May 18, 2007 at 01:22 AM
Beck, you should not. As long as you can face the idea of vacationing alone, maybe having your electricity disconnected a time or two, and keeping at least 4 extra sets of all needed keys around.
Posted by: elise | May 18, 2007 at 02:04 AM
As a first-person witness to the entire ordeal, I must say that although the Code Man may not have had his ducks in a row, it grieves my heart to see the amount of man-bashing this post has provoked.
All you women in blogville, who have taken this as an opportunity to man-hate, consider:
Cody being late for vacation because of lack of birth certificate and/or passport = 2 days
Accrued time every married male has spent waiting on 'better half' to put on makeup, do hair, undo hair, tweaze eyebrows, find clothes/change clothes, ask if they look fat/reproach husband for any and every answer given to said question, for any event imaginable = 2-3 solar years.
So time, as it were, is on our side.
P.S. http://www.nathanwrites.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Nathan | May 18, 2007 at 03:58 PM
Cody has commented in defense of himself, but I have removed the comment due to the sheer amounts of vitriol contained within.
I will paraphrase instead:
"I haven't ever let the electricity go off (true), I am a perfectly competent human being with a practice of my own (true), and I think all you women are man-haters (probably not true, given that all of us are either married or With Man). Also, Elise exaggerates too much in her posts (true). Also, I hate all of you."
There, Cody, happy with that?
Posted by: elise | May 18, 2007 at 05:16 PM
I worry to think we sound like man haters, I love my man, I was actually thrilled to have the opportunity to hate him this week though as he is normally so nauseatingly perfect I crick my neck looking up at him on his pedestal. I rather envy my husband's ability to not worry about things like being made homeless and paying bills and stuff, if only we could all relax and assume that someone ( or the fairies or a Obsessive Compulsive wife)will happen along and make it all alright. Marvellous, I do love men though, think they are somewhat inferior to us marvellous women folk but just had to straighten out that hatred thing. There, done. Phew.
Posted by: Helen | May 19, 2007 at 02:18 AM
No worries, Helen. He's just messin'.
Posted by: elise | May 19, 2007 at 08:48 AM
:)
It's a damn good thing you can laugh about it now. I'd be a bit of a freaker-outer myself in those situations.
Posted by: Jay | May 19, 2007 at 11:15 AM
This story made me so nervous. Because the TWO times in my life when I have left this country on a passport I have had nightmares the night before about being in places like Albuquerque and running out of the airport and driving home to Dallas and then driving back to Albuquerque JUST IN TIME for my flight to London because OMG I forgot my passport. Actually? Right now? I think I'll go check and make sure it's still safely in its drawer in case I have to, you know, leave the country right this second!
(pause)
No, seriously. I did just gocheckrightnowyesitsthereandIcanstopwiththehpanicattacknowplease?
Posted by: Katy | May 23, 2007 at 01:33 AM
This is one of the worst vacation stories I have ever read. Even though you write hilariously, Elise, all I want to do is curl up and cry.
Posted by: Devi | May 23, 2007 at 01:54 AM