Keep Your Knitting Needles To Yourself

12 Truce

Last week I was lucky enough to get a free vacation to Orange County with my family (thanks dad).  I stumbled to the airport early in the morning and I kept checking my purse for my ticket, my driver’s license, and my phone.  I know I looked neurotic because the woman on the shuttle bus next to who was on her way to a funeral in Michigan said, “Honey, they are there, don’t worry.”  But she doesn’t understand the gift of losing things I inherited from my father.  She wasn’t there when I packed up my car and promptly threw my keys in the trunk nor did she wittness the time my car key actually fell off my key ring and I was stranded at UTA until Geico rescued me.  Then there was the really embarrassing time I got dressed for the gym and had everything on except pants and I stepped outside and realized…something is missing…it’s was so breezy.  I need more than a purse.  I need all my personal items actually sewn to my body.  Or I need a personal assistant.  Let’s go with that, it’s much easier to explain to people.

So I get to the bag checking place and the woman putting the tags on the bags reminded me of a homeless woman who talks to her toothbrush.  She kept muttering all this stuff to herself and referring to herself in the third person.  ”Cindy, better get that tag.  Oh Cindy, looks like someone else is in a great big hurry to check their bag.”  I’m thinking oh Cindy, please be sane enough to get my bag to Orange County.  And if you are about to lose it and open fire on the crowd, please wait until I leave.  She snatches my bag and said “Don’t be impatient!”  I’m not sure how my standing there not saying anything was rushing her, but Cindy is sensitive and works for Delta (seriously Delta you might want to fire her).

So nervously waving goodbye to my bag, I hit the check point and silly me, I brought the most dangerous item that one could bring to an airport:  A bottle of water.  Look out!  I actually didn’t even have any other travel sized liquids because I was so confused I just checked my bag.  But it was early, and I didn’t think about the water.  The TSA woman pulls me aside and sighs this giant sigh that sounded more like the sound someone makes before vomiting.  I’m putting my shoes back on and she holds out the bottle and says “What does this look like to you?”  I said “A bottle of water, I’m sorry.”  And I’m looking down because I’m tying my shoe and she tells me to stop and look at it.  I look up and she was looking at me like she was going to knock me over the head with it.  She said “Is water a liquid?  Do you think it was a good decison to put it in your carry-on bag ma’am?”  Seriously?  Struggling to hold back my sass, I simply said “I guess it was a bad choice, I’m sorry.”  She then begins a lecture about how I held up the line and insists that I drink it right there.  I told her that I couldn’t drink it right now and she could throw it away.  THEN she told me I was wasteful.  At this point, my eyeballs were close to shooting out death lasers, but you just can’t call out the TSA lady.  So I just let her continue to harass me.  Finally she tossed the bottles and set me free.

So I get on the plane to Salt Lake City.  It’s a smaller plane with two seats on one side and one seat on the other.  So I squeeze past the woman in the aisle seat and start reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (good book, read the whole thing).  As I start to read, I notice that the lady next to me is bending over and digging under in her seat.  She is also wearing the biggest pair of panties ever.  She sits back up and pulls out….not a magazine…not a snack…GIANT KNITTING NEEDLES.  Seriously sharp pointy knitting needles.  Uh.  So in this small space, she decides to take up her space and most of mine knitting something purple.  Possibly another pair of giant underwear, I’m not sure.  So I try to hug the window and read but I am on guard.  Suddenly she says “Oh!  I just noticed you were here.”  We had been on the plane for an hour.  I was like yep, been here the whole time.  Her weird glassy stare continues and she laughs creepily and says, “My M&M’s are kicking in!”  I have no idea what that means.  I’m worried it means that she is about to crap her pants.  Then she lunges towards my window holding her needles and says “Lookie look outside!”  I’m holding my breath because she is almost stabbing me, and I was like yeah there is quite a view.  She says “We don’t have clouds in Virginia…”  Anyone from Virginia feel free to prove her wrong.  Then she says nothing.  It’s like I disappeared.

The rest of my flights were surprisingly normal.  People doing normal things like drinking coffee and working crossword puzzles.  I was a little sad.  The best flight I ever had was with Roger Lair, the self published author who gave me his novel The Key to REDEMPTION.  I’m not sure why redemption is in all caps.  I guess because it is so EXTREME!!!!  I really thought he was kidding when I met him on the plane from Milwaukee to DFW and he said he was a writer.  He had opened with a story about how he had played beer pong with the Prime Minister of Canada, so I had immediately put him in my crazy file and politely nodded while he was talking.  He also spoke fluent Hebrew (yet could not tell me anything in Hebrew) and he learned Hebrew so he could convince his girlfriend that God really did not want her to wait until marriage.  He basically claimed he retranslated the Bible, which also poses a few questions….However, apparently his charade worked because he got laid.  Then he told me he went to UTD and had scored the highest possible score on the math placement test.  I was like wow…what an achievement…that’s super.  But really, he was good at everything.  And then suddenly he whips out this book.  His book.  The best book ever written.  It’s historical fantasy written in present tense.  One of the characters is named Brucin.  Every line from this book is hilarious and a fun game is just to open it and start reading.  But here is just one snipet of excellence…

Ahem… “The princess needs to be around people as badly as she needs a hot meal.  Traipsing through nature is not her idea of an exciting adventure.  The forest seems more like a nightmare, a never-ending green and brown nightmare.  Alex breaks into a run in her desire to reach this quaint village.  She only takes a couple steps before she feels a hand tug on her woolen dress.  Rozenwyn jumps onto her back, latching onto Alex’s shoulders The poor child weighs close to nothing but her presence does not slow the runner’s pace.”  Really that’s enough it only gets worse.  There is a part with sword wielding and attempted rape.  This book is one of my most prized possessions.

I finally got to California and Richard Nixon assured me that I would have a good time.  While the trip was set for Disneyland, California Adventure, and Newport Beach, I was tempted by the Richard Nixon Library.  The brochure promised that the Nixon library was “A dramatic roller coaster ride through half a century of California, U.S. and world history.  Just 15 minutes from Disneyland.” I don’t know about you but I am imagining looking through the museum in a speedy car with unexpected, drops, loops, and stops.  Perhaps Space Mountain could be retitled Nixon’s Mountain and as you speed through the dark you learn about China and Watergate.  Just a thought Disneyland.