By Cappy Hall Rearick
My 11-year-old grandson and I flew to Philadelphia during the worst heat wave in over a decade. Okay, so I didn’t think things through.
After breezing through baggage check-in, we approached the next checkpoint (the one preceding the 50-mile trek to Gate A-5), and that's when our troubles began. I yelled at Parker to quit leapfrogging the crowd control barriers before handing over my picture I.D. to a stoic Security Agent named Charleeka Chakendra.
“Your driver’s license is expired,” she deadpanned.
“I wasn’t reminded,” I argued.
“Are you from Saluda?” As sure as I am of my birth date, that woman was thinking: ‘Gawd help us.’
Homeland Security thought my senior moment deserved special attention, so the contents of my purse were scrutinized by a machine resembling a blowtorch. After that, they shoved me into a stall the size of a phone booth filled with small torpedo-shaped projectiles.
“Don’t move,” commanded Checkpoint Charleeka, who sounded too much like my mother-in-law.
Warm air poofed out of the midget torpedoes and poofed until the poofs covered my body. It was kind of a turn-on.
“What is the purpose of this humiliation,” I bellowed.
“Explosives,” Checkpoint Charleeka said, staring at me with narrowed eyes.
“Seriously? Seriously? You think I’ve got a bomb in my Wonderbra? I’m not a bra-bomber. I’m just a freaked-out grandmother.”
She rolled her eyes and waved us through.
We arrived in Philadelphia, but the hotel shuttle did not. I finally had to fork over the equivalent of Parker’s college tuition for an uber ride into town. The City of Brotherly Love was making me feel like a stepsister.
Parker threatened to lapse into chocolate withdrawal and my stomach craved something more than airline pretzels. Clutching a handful of “Kids Eat Free” vouchers, we high-tailed it to the Holiday Inn dining room. The “Kids Eat Free” program was the reason I booked the $200 a day room.
The kid’s menu is the biggest farce since Homeland Security poofed me for explosives. Parker took one look, visibly shuddered, then ordered fettuccini for thirty bucks.
Our plans for a morning tour didn’t pan out, either. We were wiped out and didn’t get to Independence Hall until noon where we bought tickets and hoped to stay awake while riding through history.
I hate to whine but sitting atop a double-decker bus in 200-degree heat while an actor/tour guide dropped Ben Franklin’s name every other sentence, screams equal whine time.
Next we rode the Duck, an amphibious vehicle promising a one-of-a-kind 70-minute ride around Philly. It concluded with a dunk in the Delaware River where the tour guide dropped Franklin’s name fifty more times. I don’t want to hear it again unless it’s linked to a hundred-dollar bill.
“Let’s ask him if Ben Franklin was with General Washington when he crossed the Delaware, Mammy,” Parker said.
I snatched his hand in mid-wave. “Say that name aloud again, I’ll rip your lips off.”
Since our early flight home the next day held the possibility of more jet-poofing, we returned to the hotel and left a pre-dawn wake-up call.
We should have known a fire alarm would go off in the middle of the night that included evacuation orders. I thought Parker was going to wet his boxers. “We’re on FIRE, Mammy! Suuu-weeeeet!”
I grabbed my laptop, iPhone and the purse containing my expired driver’s license. It’s all about priorities. As it turned out, nothing was fired up except disgruntled hotel guests standing in the street sweating like packhorses at midnight.
At the airport, no torpedo poofers searched for grandmothers packing heat. I was treated instead to a personal pat down. Discovering no incendiary devices inside my bra or shoes, Homeland Security patted down Parker to make sure Granny wasn’t planning to blast him and everybody else into the middle of next week.
Parker grinned wildly during his body search, his mind busy embellishing his Philly adventure stories for when he wrote an account of, “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.”
Genes don’t lie. Gawd help us.
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