Gaze into my crystal ball

No Karen Amster travelogue would be complete without sharing an airport misadventure, and this trip was no exception.

It started off as the least chaotic check in we've ever head in the Caribbean.

A few simple questions were answered.

(No..we haven't visited Iran in the last six months..ask us the same question ten or twenty years from now and you'll get the same answer)

I remember one time, in Turks and Caicos, I think, when the departure line was so long that I considered applying for a visa and seeking permanent employment..I'm sure the island needs someone to pen personalized show tunes for special occasions, right?

But today's departure promised to be quick and stress free.

Only one other idiot besides me forgot to pack socks and or sandals, so barefoot I stood, loading up my tray of belongings onto a roller.

Jim is not too far behind me when he says, alarmingly, "Something's wrong..they're keeping your bags."

My "bags" were my every day, 80 pound Jessica Simpson handbag, and a plush tie-dyed tote bag with drawstrings from Woodloch that I live in, practically.

I'm getting a little nervous..all the Woodloch bag contained, or so I thought,  was  a bunch of dead  pens and my blogging notes that were random and haphazard, so much so that I thought I inadvertently arranged them into some kind of code that would suggest I'm affiliated with a terrorist group.

Maybe the bag had a hair brush?  Underwear?

The TSA agent removes a bottle of sunscreen that I had forgotten to pack into the checked-in luggage, which she proceeded to put into a bin of other confiscated items.

Mystery solved.

Was it though??  Was it??

She takes my Jessica Simpson bag into there back and I'm freaking out, because my wallet contained $200.00 and more important, my TWEEZERS!

The handbag was fine, the problem seem to lie deep within the mysterious crevices of the Woodloch tote bag.

I swear on everything holy, she looks at Jim and I and asks:

"Do you have a crystal ball?"

My eyes said, "WTF???"

My brain said, "no..do YOU?? I'm guessing you don't because you'd know for certain that I DO NOT have one in the bag."

My mouth said:  "um..no????"

She called in reinforcement, and now two TSA members with elongated nails are pawing through malfunctioning pens and again, one of them asks:  "Do you have a crystal ball?"

My brain answered:  "If I DID, don't you think I'd be at the race track instead of this line? Don't you think I'd be asking it for the exact location of my favorite tube of lipstick that disappeared under the vanity sink in room 7101, Sandals Antigua, resort?"

The agent insists there is something heavy inside that bag.

The tote has no compartments, and trust me, that has proven problematic with key cards and cell phones before.

I was really starting to doubt myself.

You know how when you check in, someone will always ask you if you ever left your bags unattended, and you always say no?

I started thinking about yesterday at the beach, and  the peddler with his attache filled with cheap silver necklaces, and how he chastised me for thinking the brown bobbing and weaving oblong was could be anything but seaweed.  

Did he slip something in, maybe sewed a crystal ball into the lining because I proved him wrong when the dry photographer got wet and told us it was neither seaweed or stingray, it was a buoy with which  to anchor a boat?

After an eternity, the first agent grasps her thin fingers onto a piece of ribbon with patriotic colors that was attached to a long forgotten and somewhat heavy silver medallion  that I won at a Woodloch Scavenger Hunt one year.

If I possessed a crystal ball, I would have figured out a way to capture the gold.

Thanks once again for all the people who read my blogs..and still like and respect me.

It was a really wonderful--and much needed--vacation.