More than you ever wanted to know about RTS' marriage

How attached to this blog do I feel? I am willing to air my marital problems for everyone to read. Is my marriage in trouble? No. Do my wife and I fight? Almost never. However, we seem to have one ongoing problem.

A little over 2 years ago, my wife, my daughter who was under 1 at the time and I had traveled from the ATL back to the 6-1-2 to visit friends and family. I had gone up earlier in the week for business and my wife and daughter came up Thursday night. They rented a car and went to visit one of her friends in Osceola, Wisconsin before meeting up with me on Saturday.

Everything was fine until we got to the airport Sunday morning. When we dropped off the rental car, I asked my wife if she needed anything in a stack of paper that looked like trash. She said no and I threw the stack away. We proceeded to check-in. The baby was hungry, but we figured we would get through security first and then feed her. We went up to the counter. I showed my drivers license, but my wife could not find hers. She rifled through her purse and her wallet but could not find it. She had an expired license but the agent informed us that we needed a second piece of government issued ID, a library card or voter registration card or Social Security card… This brought about an argument from my wife that it should not be relevant that it is expired because she is not driving and that she is just using it for ID. The ticket agent did not budge. I chimed in that it is ridiculous that the only thing keeping her from flying is a library card. I forgot which one of asked how would we ever get home if we were in a state like Hawaii since we could not fly or drive back from there. The line behind us had grown long. The baby was very hungry and started to fuss. We called my parents to make sure the license was not left at their house. It wasn’t. I tore the luggage apart in line to make sure that it did not get packed. It didn’t. So they we were standing in line, creating a scene, being those people at the airport. Finally, a supervisor came over and agreed to let us through as long as my wife went through the more thorough security check. No problem for us. We got through, fed the baby and made it on to the plane. People came up to us by the gate and said “Hey, I see you made it.” All I wanted to do was slip into anonymity. I was a pissed and I took my pound of flesh from her. We concluded that she probably put the license in the rental agreement and that I threw it out with the rest of the trash. It was probably the biggest fight in the 5 years that we have been married.

Fast forward to today. My wife had a 9:55 flight to NY. I was going on about my pre-market work. At 9:00 I got a call from her. “Do you have my driver’s license from when we went to the zoo?” Sure enough I did. I asked her ‘What do you have with you? Do you have an expired license? How about a library card, voter registration, SS card…?” She said “I am not sure; I am pulling into park now.” I could hear the panic in her voice. She just started at a new job and does not want to F this up. On top of that the last time she traveled the travel dept. booked her on the wrong day, so this would be the second fiasco in as many attempts. The airport is a good 45 mins away from my office. She had 55 mins until the plane was supposed to leave. There was no time to park and check what she had on her. I tore out of the office with my rage boiling over. I was weaving in and out of traffic. There is a Seinfeld episode where Elaine is trying to get someone to the airport and she claims to be seeing moves 3 or 4 cars ahead. I was in that zone. I made it 2/3s of the way to the airport in 25 mins in morning commuter traffic. She called me “I checked in no problem and am going through security now.” What? How did that work? Apparently, all you need to fly is an expired license. She checked in with her Delta Skymiles card and a TSA agent assured her all she needed for security was the expired license. I told her that loved her and that I hoped it worked the same way in NY and that she would make it home. I turned around and headed back to work ½ mad and ½ laughing at the situation. I love my wife and she is a whole lot smarter than I am, but seriously how dumb is it to go to the airport twice with out your drivers license? I mean we are living in a post 9/11 world (I am only saying that ¾ kidding).