We took the kids to be interviewed for Nexus passes yesterday.

 
Nexus passes are the cards everyone waits in line to get immediately after waiting in line at the Orlando airport. Invented by Sir Walt D Nexus who had hours to think about how to jump to the head of the line after his last trip to Disney.

 
Our last wait in Orlando had us wedged between two velvet ropes (much stronger than you might think) while people formed two, imaginary rows. The rows were imaginary because people would shuffle back and forth depending on their perception of how the two, sometimes three, sometimes seven, sometimes zero lines were moving. Somehow, our family of five managed to hold firm at the very back as if we had a direct line to someone in security who was prompting us, “You guys just hang back and whatever you do, don’t move ahead. Be sure to let anyone behind you form a new imaginary row so they can squeeze past you.” And then I think I heard some snicker-whispers.

 
We watched the families and business travelers with Nexus passes breeze by and lunged at them through our velvet cages, never fast enough to yank them down to the floor and invite them into a post-Disney battle-royale.

 
We told the kids we were being interviewed by some government agents and then we would receive our passes to freedom. A part of me wanted to book a trip to Orlando the minute after the passes were issued so we could spend the day walking past our previous lines and wave at people like all of our predecessors had done in airports the world over.

 
The kids were nervous about being interviewed but probably not as nervous as I was that there would be some guy named Mortimer hiding behind a wall of computers who, moments after my prints were processed would shout, “Yep! The prints I’ve been waiting for!” and then I would be escorted to a holding cell somewhere where I would live out my final years googling skinless, boneless chicken recipes I would never get to try. (Probably because the prison would also be out of Dijon mustard)

 
The customs agent approached our family while one of the kids whispered, “What if I forget Grandpa’s middle name?”

 
“Well Don’t!” I tried to form tears in my eyes to make it really dramatic but nobody seemed to care.
We shuffled into a tiny booth, had our pics taken, our fingers printed and then we headed to another building for iris scans.

 
This all seemed really thorough considering my plans to just use it to taunt Disney travelers.

 
The kids found a wall of posters where there were rewards for finding various dangerous criminals.

It seemed odd these posters would be hung at child-height but maybe they were fake and meant to teach them all a lesson. My kids were scared but not as much as I would have liked. They seemed fine that there was a $50k reward to find a murderer on the loose. Devastated that we were out of goldfish crackers, sure, and that no one was offering a reward for refills.

 
If we “pass” the final exam (Grandpa’s middle name: William) we should be issued our tickets to freedom within 8-10 days.

 
See you at Disney soon. We’ll be the ones at the front of the line.