Scissors of Mass Destruction

Don’t you love AAdvantage miles? They have been such a blessing to our family. Drew endures the nightmare of business travel and I get to fly for fun! In June Raytheon sent Drew to Chicago for a week, and I was invited to tag along. I totally know how to tag. I’ve traveled with this engineer on business before and I understand the drill. But regardless of where we fly, this is how the trip begins.
We leave the house the day before the plane departs. That gives us time to anticipate highway construction, traffic delays, and changes in the seasons. On the way, we listen to KRLD on the 8’s for the official traffic report, until we’re close enough to DFW to get the gate number from his Blackberry. In between, I get drilled on the contents of my carry on luggage and the exact location of my driver’s license.
“Do you have your valid photo ID?”
“Right here.”
“Tweezers?”
“No.”
“Nail file?”
“No.”
“TWO PAIRS OF SCISSORS?!”
He will never let me live it down. On the way to Lubbock last summer, Terran and I sat in the back of the Suburban and we trimmed wallet photos to be handed out at Matt & Kyla’s wedding reception. I stuck the scissors in the front of my bag when we were through. We came home, turned around the next day and flew to Florida for a job interview. I was a bit stressed. And it wasn’t until I saw the security guard call another security guard over to look at the x-ray of my bag that I remembered the two pairs of scissors. Drew was in the other line.
“Oh, I am so sorry.” I whispered. “It’s about the scissors, isn’t it? Just throw them away!” I could see Drew taking off his shoes and his belt out of the corner of my eye.
“Ma’am, you aren’t allowed to take lethal weapons on the aircraft.”
“I know, I know. I was just trimming photos with my daughter-in-law and…ha, would you believe we had 2 weddings a week apart?” I leaned in close and lowered my voice. “Just throw them away. Really. Hurry.”
“If you want to have them returned, you’ll have to fill out a form…”
Drew had retrieved his laptop and was putting his shoes and belt back on when he heard me scream, “For crying out loud, just throw them in the trash before my husband sees them! You don’t understand! I’ll be banned from all future air travel with him if he finds out I violated the No Fiskars policy!” They let me go on through, but I think DFW Security has me on a special list.
I’ve got the tag-along dress code down, too. No jewelry, no hair accessories, no zippers, no shoes, no bra. I wear a hospital gown and bobby socks to avoid any unnecessary delays in the wand department.
We hurry to the gate and wait for the American Airlines staff to arrive for work. Drew sweetly offers to go and get us coffee. In other words, I have to stay in my seat. I lost my coffee stand privileges several years ago when I wandered over to the Brighton kiosk and bought a purse. And the only reason I walked on down to the Fossil kiosk was to buy a watch with bigger numbers on it so I wouldn’t be late for take off. Since we are there long enough to each consume an entire pot of coffee, you’d think I would also have time to make a mad dash to the potty. Oh, you silly women! Why do you think I asked for a permanent catheter on our first anniversary?
I’m not sure flying anywhere is much of a vacation for Drew. I’ve heard his horror stories of delays on the tarmac, cancelled flights, lost luggage, rent car mix-ups and long lines to everything. I am amazed that in his 27 years of business travel, he has never been late for a flight. So last month when he informed me that he needed to take a week of vacation before the end of August or lose it, we looked at our options. The thought of just the two of us, hanging out here at the house with no schedule to meet sounded pretty enticing. It’s only Wednesday noon and we just returned from Home Depot for the 4th time.
I wonder why Home Depot doesn’t have a kiosk at DFW?