You know what’s really easy to do? The same thing over and over again. It feels nice, doesn’t it? That warm hug of familiarity - knowing that today is going to be very much like the last. Because it will, right?

I have friends who could be woken up in the middle of the night and asked to do something really important, like save a human life. Meanwhile, I can hardly be trusted to sleep safely. One evening, my unconscious self walked straight out the back door to pee in the woods.

My grandfather was a volunteer emergency medical technician who slept with the police scanner on. He possessed an unwavering ability to take life as it came, enthusiastically rolling with the punches. With that kind of upbringing, it’s no wonder that my father has also been first on the scene many times. I’ve watched him get right in there for a snow day cow-birthing. He’s taken the lead on legally burning down a house (very rad) and extracted countless vehicles from being stuck when someone’s day went pear shaped.

I did not inherit such coolness in the face of adversity. My days typically consist of making a thoughtful plan and sticking to it. God forbid someone submit a change order for an unscheduled bathroom stop or an errand that wasn’t accounted for.

So I was ill prepared last Wednesday morning when things hit the fan. We were standing in line at the Delta counter. The time was 5:16 am. Boarding for our flight started in just over 20 minutes. I took out our stack of passports and realized that mine had some old looking stickers on it. Eyes grew wide as I opened what was obviously my old booklet - you know, the one that you are supposed to discard? Sweat came immediately.

Allison usually begins her special requests with a little sarcastic “Don’t let your brain explode” but this time it really did. It was panic, disbelief, regret and shame all rolled into one terrible feeling that buzzed through my whole body. There was a glitch in the matrix.

A passport card does not really count for anything if you are trying to leave the country. I knew that. You probably knew that. That didn’t stop us from burning precious time waiting on an understanding Delta employee to confirm that the one in my wallet was indeed worthless. I threw everything but a backpack at my three ladies, who collectively looked at me the way I deserved to be looked at - like a father who had just ruined a perfectly good vacation. There was no other option than to try. I sprinted back to our car, foregoing crosswalks in favor of a straight shot down the passing lane for departures.

Birmingham is a city possessing many lovely attributes. The one that I was certainly most thankful for, in this moment, was a conveniently located airport. With the relative unpredictability of security lines and parking, I felt like the Lexus and I could at least hit our number. It was twelve miles each way. Sport mode engaged.

The cats were really confused when I came flying back in. They were surveying their unusually large buffet when I sprinted past. In the most predictable fashion, my usable passport was shoved all the way in the back top corner of a drawer. My typical reaction in these scenarios is to get all upset but I was already pegged. Hastily, I emptied the drawer of its contents while giving myself a pep talk in the third person.

Stock car racer grandpa would have been proud of how I took those turns back down Rocky Ridge Road. Man and machine became one as we timed the lights perfectly and zipped back through downtown. Empty parking spaces, which had been plentiful earlier, were now seemingly nonexistent. Every section I passed took me further from the terminal, further compounding the challenge that still lay ahead.

A blurry image on my phone chronicled the faraway wasteland where I finally found a spot. 4F is not a place I would recommend to any fellow travelers. One star. Back on my feet, nothing left to do but hustle and hope.

Surely ‘sweating profusely’ is a standard red flag in the TSA handbook, but bless them for not giving me the full pat down. I made relatively quick work of security, but before I could get my shoes back on, Allison called saying they were about to close the doors. We were running again, and this time Terminal B was cheering me along.

When I made it as far as one can go (because that’s where they put the Atlanta flights) I turned to see an empty stand, door closed. “Where is the attendant!?” I yelled frantically. People not already looking at me like I was a lunatic now did so. Then I turned around and saw the other Atlanta flight. This one was still boarding, and it was mine.

It is then that I am both thrilled with my victory yet somehow quite irritated that there is still a line of people waiting to get on this plane. Are we really this inefficient as a species? There was a family ahead of me that we saw at check in, and I wonder how mundane their last half hour has been in comparison. I queue impatiently on the jetway just like always, then find my seat next to a relieved ten year old who had likely been scanning the section for better dads.

People continued to board. I hugged my beautiful child, exhaled, and thought about what could have been accomplished with these luxurious few minutes before the door finally did close. Though my ears were still a bit hot with embarrassment, I had improbably beaten the odds. Our vacation was proceeding as scheduled. The rest of that day was a different level of awesome, because for a while it wasn’t going to happen.

Though I’m certainly not aiming to experience another passport whoopsies or return to the limits of adhesion in our six passenger suv anytime soon, I’m very grateful to have weathered an emergency test of my mettle. And it was quite a rush, I tell you. Life is never going to work out exactly as planned, so bring on the change orders. They make for better content.