On Monday, Labor Day 9/5/2022, my husband of over 46 years, the father of my children and professional theater partner for over 47 years, was about to fulfill the #1 thing on his bucket list: visiting one or more foreign countries before he was too old to make the trip. This trip was his odyssey!

With a mutual friend, a chance to make professional connections, and mileage plus free air travel, the date was set.

Now, a footnote: my husband spends a lot of his waking hours lost in thought solving problems, thinking of ways to create more efficiency in his life and composing humorous one liners that continually make me laugh, and as a result constantly forgets where he puts things. I can attest to the fact that every day of our time together I have heard this phrase in one form or another, at least if not more times, “Rochelle, do you know where… I just put it down. I could have sworn it was right here!”

We went over his itinerary, when and where he would meet our friend, what he would take with him, the most important items being his passport, credit card, etc—check, check, check. We made copies of everything and off we went to the San Francisco International Airport. He confessed to being nervous but excited.

We arrived at 10:30 for his 12:30 flight to London, kissed a long goodbye. “Stay safe, have a wonderful time. I love you.” And though I heard in the back of my mind, maybe you should wait before leaving to go home, I poo pooed the thought and took off from SFO via Highway 101 South, and on Labor Day it was pretty fast sailing.

Someone was calling me, but I couldn’t get to my phone, couldn’t pull over, and finally reached Los Gatos where I could pause our of curiosity to see who was calling. There was a text: “Come back, come back I had the wrong passport”

“That man is so funny,” I said to myself with a chuckle. “Are you serious? Haha!”

Then I listened to the phone calls, he wasn’t leaving, he had taken the wrong passport. He would have to come home and leave the next day (thank you Mileage Plus for more miles). Back I went to the airport laughing all the way. If this had been a Seinfeld episode it couldn’t have been funnier.

A friend said, “Didn’t you want to throttle him? After all, you were in the car for four hours.”

I answered that I was laughing too hard to want to do him in.

We can search for the humor in almost every situation, it’s hidden behind our seriousness!

Rochelle
Hospitality Director at Lupin Lodge