Starts with K

My husband and I took a very brief trip to Virginia last week, and I have regrets.

First, of course, it was nowhere near long enough. We flew out Tuesday and returned Thursday – and it was too short by about a week.

Still, we brought stories home with us.

Christmas this year will feature a reenactment of my husband’s full-body search at Dulles International Airport. We can do it – because I recorded every second of it.

The trip came up unexpectedly, and we did not yet have our Real IDs. We went to the courthouse in Mantorville immediately and applied, but were told it would be a four-month wait.

In the meantime, our driver’s licenses have been poked with tiny holes, and we’re carrying the paperwork that proved we’d applied.

When I tell you that TSA does not care about paperwork, believe me.

In fact, that was exactly what the TSA agent at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport told me.

“I don’t care about your paperwork,” she said. “I don’t deal with paperwork.”

“Then you’re going to have to deal with my license and its tiny holes,” I told her, and she waved me through.

On the return trip, the good people at IAD were equally unimpressed with our paperwork. Combined with my husband’s inability to raise his left arm over his head, and he was clearly up to no good.

After an 11-minute search, he was cleared to enter, and walked up to my still-recording phone.

“I miss that kind of loving touch,” he said, winking, then blew a kiss to the TSA agents he had teased the entire time.

I’m grateful – or am I? – that they sent him home with me.

There was some excitement when we reached our departure gate, in the form of a man who would not stop screaming for help and asking people to call 911. Another man stood beside him, chatting on his phone.

They were going to be on our flight.

I would wager all 150 of us were thinking the same thing: Why isn’t anybody doing anything – especially the phone guy – and were we going to read he’d actually been kidnapped – or worse – while we sat and did nothing?

None of us wanted a turn on the national news, justifying our inaction, so I got up.

Several questions – and terse answers – later, I returned to my seat and reported to several others what I had learned.

The yelling guy was a prisoner; the phone guy was a member of the U.S. Marshals Service who did not care for my involvement.

I told him maybe next time he should wear a U.S. Marshals vest or something, and he told me to go sit down.

A few minutes later, several uniformed officers showed up and hauled the yelling guy away. The phone guy followed, still on his phone.

The rest of us watched, sharing relieved smiles and nods.

I turned to my husband, who seemed equal parts relieved and annoyed.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said when I asked what was wrong.

“I just spent the last 10 minutes rehearsing what I was going to say to both the TSA and our children if you’d gotten yourself arrested.”

He talks pretty smart for a guy who’d spent the 10 minutes before that standing in the middle of six lanes of security in his socks, pants rolled up to his knees and shirt pulled above his chest.

Anyway. We made it home, and I can hardly wait for Christmas.