624days

Bananas and a box of Ritz crackers. Total, $4.79. The cashier motions toward the bottle of white wine on the conveyor belt. “ID, please.”

The old man holds out a five-dollar bill instead. “ID,” she repeats, “I need both of your IDs.”

The man’s daughter, whose own jet-black hair shimmers where gray strands intersperse, explains they are paying separately.

“I still need both of your IDs.”

“But we’re paying separately!” But it doesn’t matter. Because they made the mistake of speaking to each other. Of acknowledging a relationship. Had they entered separate lines, would the store have issued an in-house spy to inform the cashier of their deception? Does security train cameras on all who enter and exit the liquor aisle, tracking their every move, just to be sure they have no potentially-under-21 tagalongs hidden somewhere in the store?

She extracts a state ID from the front of her wallet, explains the situation in Chinese to her father. But he remains empty handed. “Passport? Anything?”

No. He has a head of gray hair. Creases creating a topographic map of the ups and downs of his seventy-plus years across his face. Withered hands that search his pockets for documents that aren’t there. Isn’t that enough?

The cashier removes the wine bottle from the conveyor belt, tucks it beneath the register. “No ID, no alcohol.”

718days

We try to find the most casual place on the street. A sports bar, naturally. For some reason, in the Midwest, “sports bar” is a term for the epitome of family dining. You know, crayons and the deluxe kids menus with stickers, giant sundaes that occasionally arrive upside down in the form of a crazed clown, football-shaped potatoes, that kind of thing.

This sports bar has the same friendly worn-down booths, the same wood high-chairs in the window, the same local wall decorations and out-of-season Christmas lights. But there’s a bouncer at the door. And he’s checking IDs.

A waitress walks by to change something on the sidewalk sign.

“Excuse me, can the baby eat here?”

She looks confused. “Yeah, of course! We have… highchairs… and really great chicken fingers. Or you could order him an appetizer…?”

So our two-year-old walks right past the bouncer while he scans our IDs and gives us solid once-overs and I try not to make jokes about printing holographic loons on hotel key cards just to get wasted in sports bars at 7 pm with toddlers. At least they accept our out-of-state IDs.