Silly me. When I returned from a trip to Montreal back in May, I left my passport in the back pocket of my pants. One wash, spin, rinse, and dry cycle later, out comes my pants and a passport that looked as if, well, it had gone through a wash, spin, rinse, and dry cycle. It was kind of shriveled looking, so I immediately put it on the floor under every weighted book I could find for a few days.

What I ended up with wasn’t necessarily bad looking – fortunately, everything that was a printed image suffered little, including the 10-year visitor stamp from the Indian embassy in San Francisco I had to go through hell and back to attain. The only victim appeared to be the glue that held the vinyl outside cover to the back of the first and last pages. When I presented it to the lady at the Continental Airlines counter last Friday, she said this would never make the grade if I was traveling overseas, so I immediately set in motion a plan to get my passport up to at least a passing grade – after all, I’m scheduled to vacation in Bermuda a little over a month from now.

So this past Saturday, with the help of my mom, I dragged out the ironing board and gave a good trampling of the passport with a warm iron, hoping the glue that had once held this precious document together would wake up and do its adhesive thing. No go. Next, I sprinkled a little water on the glue and tried the same thing – this time, we got a pretty good adhesive mojo working that held most of the cover and its pages together in the middle, but the edges were still a little loose for my taste. A bit of Elmers Glue seemed to take care of that, and now I have a solid, one-piece official document once again.

Will it fly before the authorities? Only time will tell – the first test comes this Friday at Boston’s Logan Airport. If not, there are places that will replace your existing passport for around $70, but that won’t help me with that damned India stamp/sticker, and I’d hate like hell to have to go back to San Francisco and get that replaced.

A word to the wise – always be sure your passport is safely extracted from wherever you have carried it the next time you return from a vacation or trip abroad. It just might save you time and dinero.