Pt 2 Arizona or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane part 2

Okay, so with my cart full of luggage, I approach the counter. I am completely organized and I know what I am doing. Each child, except for number 4, is sitting quietly (sort of, well as quiet as five young people can be) and I hand the woman behind the counter one boarding pass. She types some stuff on her computer, asks me a question or two about the person for whom the boarding pass has been issued, takes one bag, puts the tag on the bag and hands the bag to me. I hand the bag to child #4 who then takes the bag over to the x-ray machine and onto the conveyor belt, where we wave (telepathically anyway, we wouldn't want people to really see us WAVING good bye to luggage) and then he returns to the counter with me where we, unceremoniously begin the process again. Now we are at bag number four when she decides to ask some questions about the baggage. The questions go something like this, "Do you have any blah blah blah" or maybe it was more like, "Oh, you wouldn't happen to have any blah blah blah packed would you" or something else along those lines. While the way the question was presented isn't really that important the blah blah blahs ARE! The blah blah blahs are flammable things like matches, fireworks, lighters, etc. Not wanting to be the cause, or effect, of a mid-air explosion I say, "Well, we do have caps for a cap gun packed". Errrrrrrr!!!!!! Did you hear the breaks on the machine we call progress stop short?

"Oh, I am not sure if you can have any caps on the plane" She looks over at the men running the x-ray machine and says, "Well, if they didn't notice them then I guess it must be okay" She must have thought about that for a moment because then she said, " well wait a minute" and began to type away on her computer. "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm" is all she is saying. She keeps looking up from her keyboard and reassuring me, "Give me just a minute". I am thinking, "Oh, okay, she only needs a minute to figure out if our caps are going to crash the plane" Now it is my turn, "hmmmmmm".

She looks up, sticks her pointing finger up in the air and says, "give me just a minute" and walks away to see, I guess, I don't know, the wizard behind the green curtain? She comes back a few minutes later, and says, "Just one more minute". Now I am not exaggerating when I say that this took about 10 minutes, just to find out it the caps are going to cause a flying catastrophe. In the mean time, while waiting for the news, I turn to child #4 and say, "which bag has the caps in it?" He says, "one of the bags that has already gone down the conveyor" AHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Now if you are anything like me you are asking yourself why on earth the woman waited until after three bags had been sent before asking me these obviously important questions.

So finally emerging she announces that she has just one more place to ask- the x-ray men. She walks over and says something quietly and they respond, almost yelling, "OH NO, NO CAPS ALLOWED ON THE PLANE. NO WAY, UN UNH, NO CAN DO, ETC. ETC. ETC" You get the picture. "Okay, which bag has the caps in it?" she says smiling. Child #4 and I exchange dreadful glances, "one of the bags that already got sent to wherever bags go". In my infinite wisdom I put colored ribbon on all of our bags, so it made the bags easy to describe. She calls to the keeper of the bags and has our three bags sent back. Children #1 and 4 now go all the way to baggage claim, bring all three bags back, remove the offensive caps and put all three bags back on to the conveyor and now we can move on to the rest of the bags. Here is about where my husband showed up. Let's hear it for showing up to the airport a couple of hours early.

Okay, so you will still have to tune in next time to find out what happens to the rice milk!