Story of the Day 10/29/2011

I came home , last night, from the wedding, to find that Aaron had made some strategic changes to what had been packed. He had added three more pairs of underwear. And had decided to take the larger backpack, and not the Power Rangers one he had originally selected, and cough drops. No, the cough drops were this morning.

I noticed that he had no shirts in his suitcase
Again? Didn’t’ we do this/ this is worse than de ja vue- this is, “am I fucking losing my mind?’ And I am lying, slightly. There was one shirt packed into the suitcase. One.

“Aaron, where are your white shirts !?” I screamed at him, from 4 feet away.
He is deaf, so I have an excuse for screaming. Not for wringing his neck, but for screaming.

“ They are there.”
I look and he is pointing at a pile on his bed. Nota pile of folded shirts, a pile of …..shirts.

I tell him to fold them and put them in the suitcase.
I grab one and start folding. I put it in the suitcase. I grab another, and see he has folded his shirt, the one he has placed atop the one I folded, and folded isn’t quite the right word. Wadded would be more appropriate a description.
I pick it up and tell him, “I will fold them!” And there was no motherly warmth in my voice.
It was now about midnight, and he would be flying out in….well, after not having gotten enough sleep. And the fucking suitcase had been packed….with all the shirts neatly folded, very, very, very recently.

And I look at his small black carryon. The one he will be checking.
He has not just switched which backpack to put into it, he has added some books.
I try to zip the suitcase. It won’t zip.

It has to zip. He is using this carryon as a carryon until he gets to JFK, then he will put his siddurim ( prayer books) his teffilin, and a pair of socks and underwear into the backpack and use that as a carry on for El AL.

I rearrange everything.
It still wont’ zip.
I rearrange everything a 3rd and a 4th time, but it won’t zip.

I take out two of the books.
I rearrange again.
Closer, but while I am rearranging, I feel something sharp in the backpack. I open up the top, zipped compartment. I find a package of hearing aid batteries, and a nail scissors.

I open up the next compartment, and an overpowering odor of pot, maryjane, marijuana, that shit hits me.

“Aaron, do you want to have your ass hauled off the plane and your body cavities searched? I am sure it will make very good stand up material- AFTER you recover!”
I toss the aromatic backpack into a corner of the room and grab the Power Rangers backpack and put it into the carryon.

I have him stand on the bathroom scale. Then he lifts up the larger suitcase. It s under 50 lbs. barely.
I have him lift up the carryon, it is 27 lbs.
Success!

We go to sleep.
This morning, well, the same morning, but at a slightly less un-godly hour, we shoved him and his suitcases into the car.

After driving for about 35 minutes, parking the car in the overpriced garage and struggling with the self-check in kiosk which refused to acknowledge that Aaron was still breathing, or , at least, that he had a right to the ticket that cost us over a grand, we managed to wave good-bye him, and feel somewhat certain that he might actually make it to Jerusalem, intact and un-molested by security.