Gone Bananas

Pam: Dottie was telling me about taking her mother to Hawaii last week.

Ann: I’m so jealous. Did they have a good time?

Pam: The trip was fine. But Dottie’s mom is such a tightwad it made Dottie nuts.

Ann: I thought this trip was Dottie’s Mother’s Day gift to her mom.

Pam: It was. But Dottie’s mom is even tighter with Dottie’s money than she is with her own.

Ann: My mom can be the same way.

Pam: They were shopping for souvenirs and Dottie was considering buying some painted ceramic hibiscus flowers for her friends. Her mom actually suggested she buy the broken ones off the clearance table and then have the store ship them so that people would just figure they were broken in the mail.

Ann: That’s certainly thrifty and pretty clever. Except wouldn’t they notice that the broken pieces were missing?


Pam: Leave it to you to think of the technicalities. What bugged Dottie the most was her mom kept waking her up early everyday so they wouldn’t sleep through the free continental breakfast. She told her she’d have gladly paid for breakfast for another hour’s sleep. But her mom wouldn’t think of it.

Ann: I think I’d have had to drug my mother if I was Dottie.

Pam: It probably crossed her mind. By the end of the week, she was pretty glad to be headed home. When they finally got to the airport, they went to that special area to mail some fresh pineapple she’d bought for some friends back home.

Ann: Yeah, they’re really strict about bringing fruit and vegetation back to the mainland. I couldn’t even bring my lei home.

Pam: Yep. So Dottie stopped to ship these pineapples, while her mom sat nearby. When she finished up, her mom had disappeared. She finally caught up to her at the security check point on the way to the gate. She was being finger printed in a glass office next to the x-ray machines!

Ann: Finger printed! As in being arrested? What on earth did she do?

Pam: She tried to go through security with a banana in her pocket.

Ann: That's quite a crime alright. Armed and dangerous.

Pam: When they found the banana in her pocket, the guards told her to go back out to the lobby area and either eat it or throw it away. When Dottie got there, they told her they had made it very clear to her mother that it was against the law to take the banana past the security check point.

Ann: So what had she done with it?

Pam: Believe it or not, she had walked back towards the ticket counter, stopped in plain sight of the guards, put the banana in her other pocket, and tried to get through security again.

Ann: You’re kidding. Is she a little... forgive me, 'bananas'?

Pam: Apparently they were pretty annoyed with her and told her again that it was not a game and that she was to get rid of the banana one way or another before she attempted to pass through security again.

Ann: So how’d she get arrested?

Pam: She walked back towards the ticket counter, out of the sight of the security check point this time, put the banana in the hood of her jacket, and for a third time tried to pass through security with the stupid banana.

Ann: That’s hysterical! What was she thinking?

Pam: That’s what Dottie asked her. She said, “What is your problem Mom? It’s not as though that thing is stuffed with diamonds!” Dottie told me she was going to say cocaine but figured they were in enough trouble.

Ann: So what was so important about that banana?

Pam: Apparently Dottie’s mom picked it up at the hotel’s free continental breakfast. She told Dottie, “It’s not really free you know. You’re paying for it in the price of the room. If you don’t take the food you’re getting ripped off!”

Ann: She’s right but I’d say that’s frugal to the extreme.

Pam: Well Dottie explained to the guards that her mother was on medication and apologized profusely for loosing track of her. She neglected to explain she was only on blood pressure medicine.

Ann: So they let her go?

Pam: They released her but wrote some sort of ticket. Dottie says that that “free banana” so far has cost her a fifteen hundred dollar retainer for the lawyer, with more to come.

Ann: Hopefully she’ll win on ‘appeal’.

Pam: Groan

Forced To Travel Light

Pam: How was your trip?

Ann: Fine except I nearly pulled a hamstring jumping through all the hoops. That TSA is really something. It wasn’t too bad though. The guy sitting next to me on the plane was a pilot. He was headed home from delivering a corporate jet to be repainted. He had some pretty interesting stories about flying after September 11th.

Pam: I’m sure that was a crazy time for anyone in aviation.

Ann: Actually he’d flown into Washington, DC on September 10th and he watched the Pentagon burn from his hotel balcony. He said they shut down Reagan International Airport in DC for about a week so he had to hang around to get his jet out of there.

Pam: What a mess. What about his passengers?

Ann: Once the commercial airlines were flying again he sent them home but he waited around until the FAA finally allowed private jets to leave.

He arranged to fly the jet back single-pilot and without passengers. In other words, he would be the only one on the airplane. But the TSA escorted him out onto the ramp and inspected the private jet for weapons. Then they confiscated his nail clippers, the tweezers from the first aid kit, and even the spoons from the galley!

Pam: Okay, that’s over the top!

Ann: He told the guy, “Listen, do you get that I will be absolutely alone on this aircraft? It never occurred to me to hijack myself with a spoon!”

Pam: I guess there’s no place for common sense in the regulations. I had something happen to me at that same airport. But instead of being too strict the TSA was actually way too lenient. I’m glad they let me through, but looking back, it’s pretty scary.

Ann: So they let you fly but confiscated your flask? That would be scary.

Pam: Very funny…So we were heading home and when we got to the airport I realized that somehow I lost my driver’s license. Bret was able to get my boarding pass using a credit card in the self-serve kiosk but I knew I would need a government issued ID to get through security.

Ann: What? (Laughing) Were your top secret CIA credentials with your driver’s license?

Pam: I was working undercover on this trip so no, I didn’t have them. So, anyway, I go to the first TSA agent at the entrance to security, you know the one who checks boarding passes and compares them to the ID, and I explain my problem. She asks if I have anything at all with a photo on it and I tell her all I have is my Costco card.

Ann: No way.

Pam: Yeah. So she says that will do but that I’ll have to undergo further screening and she marks my boarding pass accordingly. So Bret and I put our stuff on the conveyor belt…briefcase, laptop, carry-on suitcase, jacket, purse, shoes, the works.

Ann: They practically strip search you these days. You'd think they could make that more fun…

Pam: And so I walk through the metal detector and as expected I’m pulled aside for a closer look. Meanwhile Bret collects ALL our belongings and gets himself re-dressed. Since he’s loaded down pretty good, he motions to me that he’ll go ahead to the gate and I nod to him.

Then I have my intensive search. They “wand” my arms, legs, and bare feet, they pat down my sides and do the prayerful chopping hands thing down the center of my chest to check my bra. Finally they tell me that they'll also have to search my belongings and ask me to point them out among the items at the end of the conveyor belt.

Ann: But I thought Bret already gathered everything and went to the gate.

Pam: He did. So I tell them I don’t have anything and they say, “Okay then. You can go.” And they watch me walk to the gate with no suitcase, no purse, no jacket, and no belt. I was empty handed and barefoot as I left security and they thought nothing of it!

Ann: Maybe they figured you were going to the beach.