Out and About Again

So as the line snaked forward, the clerk across from me took my passport, typed in a few keys, instructed me to lower my mask, and smiled.

“You can pass,” he said.

So much for the urban legend about people on this bottom-of-the-world continent walking around on their heads with their feet in the air.

I held out the folder with my paperwork and felt a bit of disappointment. For naught I had sat filling out these forms. I even answered a long, tedious questionnaire, detailing everything I had done in the last ten years.

“Aren’t you going to stamp my passport?” I asked.