Suicide is kinda taboo in my family and circle of friends, so this
summer I decided to take a vacation from my home town: the booming
metropolis of New Iberia.

Not that I have anything against New Iberia. As the "New" part would
suggest, the city thrives on modernisms and is pretty much built
directly on the pulse of continually changing aspects of modern
American pop culture. For example, there is now a Goodwill in New
Iberia. And I heard rumors that something called "paper money" is
coming next summer. I seriously doubt the authenticity of this
outrageous claim, however, as the rumor was spread via smoke
telegraph.

Anyway, as I said, I took a trip. And not in the sense that you'd expect
coming from a guy with an Omar Rodriguez-Lopez-style haircut.
Myself and three of my best friends thought ahead a whole week and
bought plane tickets to Kansas City, Mo. The reason we chose
"uhh...the Midwest?" as a destination was because the Get Up Kids were
playing their final show ever. My friends and I think alike, so naturally we 
weren't surprised to find out we all had this unquenchable desire to get
trampled by 80-pound girls with horn-rim glasses. And their 75-pound
boyfriends. Plus it's a mutually adored band by each of us. We figured we'd
throw caution and money to the wind and take a flight there. This was
mostly because none of our cars or bladders or cars' bladders could make
the 943-mile trip via scenic byway.

It is at this time that I should mention that I haven't flown in about eight
years and I was feeling a little apprehensive. Not because of the actual
flight, but because of how badass I heard airport staff became after 2001.
Here is a sample conversation I had with my dad a few days before the trip.

   Dad: So, you're flying, huh?
   Me: Yep!
   Dad: Do your shoes have any metal on them?
   Me: Umm... Wow, they actually do. Why?
   Dad: *giggle* You'll see.

The day of our flight, my friends and I woke up at 5 a.m. (an hour that
apparently exists) and, after a game of rock-paper-scissors, one of us
drove from Baton Rouge to the New Orleans airport. It was at this airport
that I learned a lot about myself. Namely that nothing embarrasses
me... except getting yelled at by women in pleated Dickies in airports.

Cut to the most awkward argument of my life.

"Wait, do I put my change in this box?!" I asked in a bewildered,
shoeless rage.

"WRONG!" yelled the woman, whose name tag I couldn't read. But I
think it said "The F***ing Devil." Either that or "Barbara." The name
tag was kinda small.

"OK, OK," I said, emptying everything from my pockets, including a
receipt for a Rockstar Energy Drink I bought earlier.

"NOOOOOO! I ASPLODE UR HEAD!" she said. Or something close. I'm
being very impartial in the retelling of this story. "PUT THAT PAPER
BACK IN YOUR POCKET!"

"What!?"

It was at this point that a security guard started looking at me from
afar. But not in the usual welcome, romantic way. After a few minutes
of sweating and brief concerns of eventually hearing rubber gloves
snapping, I was able to move on. My friends got through the security
with zero problems, save an uncontrollable gigglefest at my expense.

As soon as I got my shoes back on, I scurried to catch up to them. But
then the security guard I mentioned earlier stepped out in front of
me. My friends looked back and he motioned for them to keep walking.

It was at this point that I think a little bit of pee came out of me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute," he said.

I was so fed up yet amused by the situation that I almost made a fatal
joke that would've gone like this:

   Security Guard: Where are you flying to?
   Me: Where am I not flying to?

Instead, the conversation went something like this:

   Security Guard: Where you from?
   Me: New Iberia.
   Security Guard: Didn't they just get a Goodwill?

OK, so maybe that was fake too. But he did ask me where I was from and
where I got my shirt. It was a camouflaged shirt that my girlfriend had given
me about two weeks prior. It had hot pink lettering that read: Mayfest '04 -
Abbeville, La.

"That shirt says Abbeville," he said matter-o-factly. "I know someone
from Church Point."

I didn't know what to say, which I think was the correct response to his
completely arbitrarily stated fact.

"OK, you can go," he said, after a few seconds of silence.

Then I boarded my airplane and took a dump in that tiny bathroom. .

©2005 Tim Landry