COME FLY WITH ME

 I was at the airport excitedly heading off to parts unknown - I was heading for the gate for New York but I had spilled ketchup on my ticket and tried to rub it off so it now looked like it said that I was going to Eww Yuck, so I literally didn't know where I'd end up.

I had a bottle of water in my bag which I forgot about until it went through the x-ray machine and all kinds of alarms went off.  The airport went into a stage 5 lockdown, all entrances and exits were sealed off, INTERPOL was notified, Seal Team 6 were en route, and a very official-looking security officer held up my bag and asked "Who owns this?"  I said "I do," and he gestured for me to step out of the line-up.  

Now, that wasn't a good idea on his part because there's nothing I hate more than the gesture-instead-of-a-verbal-request approach, so we were off to a bad start right out of the gate, as it were.


I strolled over to where he was standing holding up my bag like it was a ticking package with a fuse attached to it, and my daughter registered a very alarmed look on her face.  (Obviously, because if she had registered alarm on her bum I wouldn't have seen it.)  He opened my bag and, with a dramatic flair usually reserved for bad murder mystery shows, produced the water bottle, held it aloft as though it was a smoking gun and there was a dead body on the floor with a bullet hole in its head, and said "What's THIS?

I said "It's a bottle of water.  Do they not have those where you live?"  Well, that didn't go over well.  He gave me a look which suggested that I might find myself in Guantanamo Bay by nightfall and said "This is against regulations."

I said "I forgot I put it in there.  I can drink it here or you can have it as there appears to be a dearth of bottled H2O where you come from."  And I smiled.  Which turns out to have been a bad idea.  He stepped towards me in a menacing fashion (or he could have had a pubic hair caught in his underwear - I find it hard to read those guys), and I saw my daughter on the other side of the security gate trying to get adopted by an elderly Greek couple.

So he said "No-one is drinking this.  This is exhibit A."  And I said "Fair enough.  Then THIS is exhibit B," and I gave him the finger.  Ok, I just made that up.  But I was REALLY hoping that would happen because you have to admit it would make one damn good story to tell when I got out of jail. 


Anyway, he said (still holding the bottle up like it was the last piece of evidence which would put me away for a very long time) "This is not going anywhere.  It's not allowed."  To which I replied "Sure, I don't care.  There's lots of bottled water where I live."

Not to be outdone in the smart-alec-last-word department, he said "You should read the regulations."  And I, determined to test every last nerve in his body, replied "I thought that was your job."

Then he  walked away waving the bottle in the air and said "Read the regulations."  Well, I HAD to get the last word in - even though I could see my daughter trying to mingle with a group of Hare Krishnas - so I said "I'm sure this is the first time airport security was threatened by a middle-aged Irish woman wielding a bottle of water." 


Thinking that was a pretty good rejoinder, I turned around expecting to see everyone clapping, cheering, and holding up signs that read "Helen for President!" and "Go Helen!" and "Irish Lives Matter!" and "The Earth Is Round And If You Think It's Flat You're a Square!."

Well, words cannot describe my crushing disappointment.  I couldn't even hear crickets.  No-one would even make eye contact with me.  Well, there was that one guy and for a moment my heart soared, but then I realized he was cross-eyed and trying to order a coffee from the ticket checker.

In the end I managed to extricate my daughter from the Hare Krishnas and we boarded our flight.  When the air stewardess came around asking what I'd like to drink I loudly declared "I'll have a large bottle of water," and turned around just in time to see my daughter don a wig and a pair of dark glasses and sit beside an old woman who was eating an unpeeled banana.





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