Stupid Incident in Toronto—Priceless!

I’m holding a Syrian passport, which requires that I renew my passport every two years. I was in Toronto and wanted to do that before we started our round-the-world trip, so I checked with my embassy to see how long it would take to renew my passport. They said up to six months! Usually I do that in a couple of days back in Egypt, but for some reason that wasn’t the case in Toronto.

Anyway, I sent my passport to the Syrian embassy in Ottawa and received it six months later. It was a relief, as things were not smooth with what is happening in Syria—especially that Canada had joined its allies in s mass expulsion of Syrian diplomats.

Once I got the passport, I went to Staples with my wife to scan it and make digital copies for any future use, and also to apply for my US visa. We did the scan and went to have a late breakfast (“Brunch”), walk around some shops and then to go to get clearance records from the police station downtown.

At the police station there was a long queue, so we took our place in the line and waited. Just before our turn came, we thought to check our documents to make sure that we had everything in place—and while doing so I discovered that I didn’t have my passport!

I freaked out and panicked and started searching my backpack and my pockets. My wife also started to check her backpack to see if it was there. We decided to leave the queue and went to the side to talk about it and try to figure out what to do. I was in a real panic and not thinking right. I wanted to cry and scream and do all sorts of other things, as you can imagine, when my wife—God bless her—mentioned that we might have forgotten it either where we ate or at Staples.

We immediately went out and stopped a cab, then went directly to Staples and went through the doors to the scanner, to find my passport waiting for me right in the place where I had put it. Smiling to me, my wife pointed out that it had been almost three hours since we left the place!

You can’t believe the relief I felt, and also how stupid I felt.

Lesson learned: Always check your documents after you do a scan…

What do you think?