Throwing Poo

Heading home from Omaha last Saturday (business or pleasure do you think?), I was pants-crappingly late to the airport due to a mix-up with the taxi service.  While I thought it best to schedule a pick-up at a specific time and location, the dispatcher apparently decided it would be better to have the driver call me and ask for play-by-play directions in Crapistani or some similarly marble-mouthed dialect. 

Fortunately, only a dozen other people were flying out of Omaha that day – half the city’s population I’m guessing, and why wouldn’t they - so when I finally arrived at the airport there were only six people ahead of me in the security line.  Unfortunately those six people were a young woman, her mother, and four tiny minions of Satan. 

The first ten minutes were amusing as I watched this gaggle of silly geese unbuckle, fold, zip, snap, pack and load a preposterous collection of plastic, collapsible kid-shit onto the conveyer belt, leaving a minefield of pretzel crumbs and stale Cheerios in their wake for me to moosh between my little piggys.  Then it came time to go through the metal detector.

As soon as Mom stepped through with the infant in her arms, little Joey, the oldest, left behind for a moment a mere four feet away, began to howl.  Either fearing for his young life or simply wanting to escape the clutches of “Nana”, he suddenly jerked away, slipped around the metal detector and latched onto his mother’s leg.  Mom shrieked, alarms sounded, and security guards wandered into action.  The sudden loud commotion caused the twins to panic, abandon Nana, and stumble through the metal detector as well.  More alarms, more vaguely interested security guards.  Mom dragged Joey back through the detector, and again the twins, now crying as well, followed suit. 

This continued on for five full minutes as Mom pleaded, children screamed, alarms sounded, security guards feigned to gain control of the situation, and Nana grew more and more confused.  It was like I was watching the Benny Hill Show only without the music bed and perky ta-tas.  Even a security guard commented that he'd never seen anything like this. 

Normally I would’ve just stood there laughing my ass off, but nothing is funny enough to be worth getting stuck in Omaha.