Recently, while my husband was away in Europe on business, my mother-in-law offered to “help out” by taking me and my almost 3 year old twins to Florida for a few days. Now, while generally I’m not one to pass up on an all-expenses paid trip, the thought of spending more than 2 minutes with my mother-in-law gives me a full-blown panic attack. But what was I supposed to do? I had to go.

First mistake: Agreeing to go.

Second mistake: Not getting a large bottle of Xanax for the trip.

While I could entertain you for hours with all the ins and outs of her passive-aggressive insanity for 4 days, I will leave you with only the most ridiculous story from the trip. Which happened to occur before we even boarded the plane for Florida.

So we get to the airport, me, her and 2 active kids, with tons of stuff – double stroller, car seats, overnight bags galore. And we go to curbside check-in.

Let me take a moment to set the mood here: Living in New York City in these post-9/11 times, when you are flying from one of the NYC airports, you take that security shit seriously. Maybe that rationale doesn’t extend over the Hudson River to New Jersey. Whatever.

So there we are at curbside. The guy behind the counter asks for our e-ticket, and then our photo IDs. I present my valid NY State driver’s license, like any normal human being would. Great. She takes out her non-photo NJ Driver’s License (sidebar: Why does the state of New Jersey even issue non-photo driver’s licenses?) and the guy says to her, “Can I see your photo ID?” And she pulls out – not kidding – a snapshot of herself! Just a random photo of herself from like, 10 years ago, just wearing an old sweatshirt and smiling at the camera like she wasn’t about to be denied access to an airport. She pushes the photo across the desk at the guy and says, “There ya go. That’s me.” And he’s not sure if she’s kidding. “This isn’t a photo ID, ma’am,” he says gently. “But it’s me,” she says again, this time holding the picture up next to her face. “See?”

The guy looked at me, and the kids, and all our stuff, and probably figured no one dangerous could be that clueless. So he lets her go. I guess he realized at that point that a terrorist would have a better plan than that.

The funniest part about this is that she actually thought that a 10 year old snapshot was enough to qualify as a photo ID. I said to her later, “I know you have a passport – why didn’t you bring that?” “It’s not an international flight,” she says. Undaunted, I try again. “Well, don’t you have a photo ID card from work? You could’ve brought that.” “But I’m off this week,” she says. I’m not making this up, people.

But to all of us Americans, the joke is on us. It seems all we need to travel these days is a snapshot, an ID card, and of course, American Express never hurts. You are now free to travel within the continental U.S. – if you still want to.