My wife and I are going to England this spring for a friend’s wedding. And since we will be but a hop, skip and a jump from Amsterdam, we’re going there for a few days after the wedding.

As you know, anyone leaving or entering the country now has to have a passport. My old passport expired about the time the BeeGees had their last hit, so I had to have it renewed. In fact, it was so old that the picture on it looked like it could be my son, or perhaps my grandson. Or maybe Billy Joel’s grandson. And it’s of such low quality that it doesn’t even look like a portrait – it looks more like a crime-scene photo.

You can renew your passport at the post office, so I went to the main one in downtown Austin. I found an office with a sign on the door that said “passports,” so I foolishly thought this was where you would go for passport stuff. I was wrong; that’s where you go to have a fat guy with a comb-over and a bad attitude tell you that, for passports, you have to stand in line – with the other 62 people who are hoping to get back to their offices before the boss notices they’re gone.

I didn’t want to stand in line, because 60 of those people aren’t there for passports – they’re in line for stamps. Or at least they think they are; actually, they’re in line so they can get to the counter and be told, after a 45-minute wait, that there are no stamps. So, not only am I wasting time, I also stand the chance of getting caught in the crossfire when someone – you’ll excuse the expression – goes postal and starts slinging lead.

But before I could get to the line, a perky Post Office employee stopped me and asked if I was renewing a passport. I said I was, and she told me I could do it myself. She looked at the paperwork I had downloaded from the Department of State website, and told me all I had to do was fill it out, mail it in with two photos (which I already had) and a check, and my brand spanking new passport would be sent to me in mere weeks.

Speaking of paperwork, if you’re renewing your passport you have to fill out a form. You use one form if you’re under 14 years old, and another if you’re renewing by mail. The form I had to fill out was the one for people who are going to Amsterdam and telling family and coworkers it’s because they’re crazy about 17th-century architecture. This one is known to the Post Office staff as the “Oh, yeah, right – canals” form.

Anyway, after my chat with Miss Perky, I headed home to complete the renewal process. But before I stuck everything in the mail I double-checked the State Department website to make sure I had my ducks in a row. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to find that Miss Perky had given me bad information. Since my passport was more than 15 years out of date, I couldn’t renew by mail; I had to do it in person. At the Post Office. After standing in line for 45 minutes.

You know the old gag about the world’s three biggest lies? One of them is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” If that’s not a reference to Miss Perky, I’ll eat my passport – if I ever get it, that is.