Sunday, January 7, 2007

No F-ing Way

I would like to inform you all that I am safely in Baltimore with my wonderful grandmother and all is well. HOWEVER, I would like to recap what happened to me today at the airport.
The morning started out normally enough. Woke up at the crack of dawn for an 8:30 flight, and surprisingly my whole house was in order and I was set to go. To the best of my knowledge, I was going to be flying on US Airways. So, my mother and I get dropped off at the US Airways terminal (she came with me to Baltimore). I go up to the guy standing at the curbside check-in (and i'm totally excited because there isn't a soul around or in line and I have my two gargantuan bags so this looks like it might be nice and easy. The guy (while reading his magazine) asks for my destination. I say Baltimore and he looks up from his magazine like I just asked him to sell me crack or something. Fast forward a few minutes and we establish that my US Airways flight is operated by United. Why the hell didn't the itinerary just say f-ing United on it??? moving on we take the two gargantuan bags and schlepp (spelling?) across the airport to the United terminal. My mother with her tiny bag and printed boarding pass goes to the self check in while I take my huge bags and try curb side check in again. Wait in line.....five minutes...then the guy looks at my bags and takes them to the scale. All I hear is, "Your bags are overweight sweet pea." Sweet pea? are you serious? I f-ing hate that. So I grab the gargantuan bags and head inside to pay even more money for the stupid flight. The United lady puts me in a nice looking short line. I wait...5 minutes...10 minutes....20 minutes....finally at the counter. The lady weighs my bags and informs me the extra weight will cost me $50 per bag. Seriously??? you must be joking considering that United has already taken away my extra leg room and offered it back to me for an additional fee. Now I have to pay you $100 for 20lbs total of extra bag weight? maybe if the plane starts to go down they'll offer me my air mask for a steal of a deal. Oh, and the life preserver under the seat takes credit cards. Assholes. but I deal. I pay and move on, a little less perky. My Mom who is the forever optimist says,"I think other than the bag thing everything for this trip seems to be falling into place really well." KISS OF DEATH. Lets fast forward to the security line. I failed to notice while standing in the line that my boarding pass was marked with a "ssss." If you don't know what this is, I'm going to tell you. It is the scarlett letter, the mark of the devil, the kiss-your-next-half-an-hour-goodbye-and-pray-to-survive-the-probing mark. So I get to the front of the line and I get sent to the left. Lane 10. The lane with the puffer thing. I think, oh, puffer thing. That's no big deal, I have had to go through the puffer thing many times. Nope. Not just the puffer thing. After the puffer thing they go through my carry on bag and I'm thinking I'm safe because all I have is my purse and some books in there. Wrong again. This lady takes the swipey thing and swipes my cell phone. She removes the tip of the swipey thing and puts it in the bomb residue scanner thing. The alarm goes off. Yeah. My cell phone apparently has bomb residue on it. You can imagine this is a surprise to me. But of course the TSA assholes can't tell you what's going on, the girl simply looks up and goes, "uh oh." UH OH? SERIOUSLY? So, the search becomes intensified while they are waiting for the results of the bomb residue test to say what type of bomb making materials I have on my phone. They open my purse and in the side pocket which I had completely forgotten about is my PEPPER SPRAY. When the guy finds this I really think they're going to take me to a private room and get out the gloves. They call some lady over who then takes the pepper spray, my id, and leaves. Still not telling me what is going on. I'm still freaking out about the bomb residue when the guy starts lecturing me about how my lip gloss is a liquid and I should pay better attention to the video. Are you f-ing kidding me? seriously? Anyway, to wrap it up they took my lip gloss and pepper spray. Apparently I had the good kind of bomb residue on my phone instead of the bad, and they let me go.
To finish it off, once I'm on the plane and we are going through some nauseating turbulance, I start to smell something weird. Look over, and yep. She's eating a banana. If you don't already know I think there should be a law against eating anything in public where the odor involves everyone around you in the snack- especially bananas. Eating bananas in public should be illegal. And yes, I'm serious.
All I could think to myself is no f-ing way.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

HA! I'm glad they thwarted your plans to blow up an airplane with lipgloss and a cellphone, McGyver!

Seriuosly, with all fo the ridiculous crap they put people through, it's a wonder that there aren't more bonafide lipstick bombs.

Unknown said...

Your mom told me that the security people told you to "wipe off" your phone. Doesn't this make you wonder if it's worth even looking for bomb residue, if bomb residue is so easy to wipe off?

Glad you made it to Italy OK. Anxiously awaiting further updates!