Just Call Me Ted.

We don’t travel much. We certainly don’t travel often to places that we can’t drive to – it’s just easier and more cost efficient with the kids in tow. But this last week, Eric and I flew to North Carolina so I could attend a conference on children’s ministries. It isn’t often that I attend such conferences, and even more rare that Eric would have the opportunity to steal away with me. Thanks to Eric’s mom coming up to care for the girls, we were both able to escape reality for a week. Yes, I was busy with my conference and Eric spent a good deal of time working on worship plans, but we were out of the normal rhythm of our lives, and that was an escape in and of itself. That is, until you take into account that the weather in Raleigh was just as cold and wet as it had been back home, the sun didn’t shine until we left, and we went through two rental cars due to battery issues. But other than that, the escape was good!

Flying with our family is always an adventure. You see, for reasons beyond our understanding, Josie is on the “no-fly” watch list. Apparently, there is a 50+ year old African-American woman out there with the same name who the government would like to talk to. We encountered this when Josie was just a toddler and have had to deal with it every time she flies. It is a bit of a headache, funny in hindsight, and just real interesting in these days of airline safety. All that said, we figured this would be an easy trip without Josie in tow. We could actually get our boarding passes online, we wouldn’t have to prove to anyone that Josie was indeed a very fair complected 8 year old, and we could breeze right through security. Well, that was true for our flight out. Getting home was another story.

As I said, we don’t fly much. We are not hip to all the new security screenings that happen in the airports – we just know enough not to crack jokes about it as you go through them. At the Raleigh airport, Eric and I were stopped for a random “explosives” screening. For this screening, they have you hold your hands palms up, while they wipe a small cloth over your palms. They then put the cloth in a machine that screens for explosive residue. As the TSA agents were explaining this to us, I giggled internally and thought that if Eric didn’t pass, he would have some real explaining to do. Just as that thought went through my mind, the machine went red, made a nasty squeal and blinked “explosives.” Yeah, it wasn’t Eric that set it off. It was me. ME?!?! Well, Ok. Apparently, nothing gets you expedited through security like a positive explosives reading!! I was personally ushered through the process, patted down (the person who patted me down then had to go through the explosives test), and my carry-on bag was searched. They even emptied my bag so they could run the same explosives test on the bottom of the inside of it. WOW – they ARE thorough! Thankfully, I passed without any further complications.

Now I realize that some would be upset by this… irritated that the screening took longer than the mere seconds it takes to walk through the metal detector. Me? I was fascinated by it. And more-so, I was thrilled to see they were doing their job!! No reason to be angry about it – it has given us a great story to tell!!

As the story continues, we got passed security and found our gate, only to hear that our plane was canceled due to weather in our connecting city of Baltimore. Ugh. Again, nothing to be mad about, just another piece of the story. That said, when I told Eric we could stay with my family who lived in town, he was none to eager to leave the terminal because that meant I would have to go through security again tomorrow and he was none to excited about again being my travel partner in that situation! HA! Thankfully, come the next day, security was a breeze. What changed in 24 hours?? Eric did some research and there is a list of items that can give a false reading on the explosives scanners – one of those items being hand cream. So for the sake of security and our sanity, I traveled with dry hands all the way home. Such a price to pay…

Thankfully, we are the type of people who can laugh about this now, as it is over, but we were also able to laugh even in the midst of it. As the TSA agents emptied my bag, full of church books from my children’s ministry conference, I giggled. I know I look like a shady character in my jogging suit with all my church books – just call me Ted (Kaczynski).