We were walking through the Portland airport on Sunday morning when Skylar burned his hand.
His parents had just dropped us off. We hadn't been to Portland to visit his family in the last year because, as it turns out, being in residency means that Skylar works every day from negative eleventy to positive eleventy. That's a 46 hour shift. Every day. And twice on Sundays plus overtime on Christmas.
We couldn't visit for Thanksgiving because see above and we can't go for Christmas because see above so we did aerospace calculus engineering advanced astrology to find a 48-hour period in which we might be able to make a quick trip, and that quick trip happened over the weekend.
Skylar's family then packed those 48 hours with an entire year's worth of activities. We cut down Christmas trees. We made and consumed feasts. We went to Skylar's family's version of church (wine tasting). And then, on Sunday morning, his parents dropped us off at the airport.
Skylar had stolen some robot/device from his parents' house just that morning and yelled at them that he was reclaiming it. Apparently he bought this thing—Google's version of Alexa?—for them last year and went through the effort of setting it up and training them on it. He found it on Sunday, unplugged and collecting dust. There was a lecture about gratitude and waste as he wrapped the device up in a plastic bag and started looking for room in our luggage.
"If you aren't going to use this, I'm taking it home," he shouted.
I'm familiar with this lecture. I've received it on a number of occasions relative to the collection of electronic devices he has brought into our home and which scare me.
He couldn't find a place in either of our suitcases to pack this because we had just stuffed them completely full of dozens of bottles of what I will call for legal reasons "olive oil" to check at the airport and smuggle into the Beehive State to drink later. We love olive oil. It pairs great with cheese.
Finding no room in the inn, Skylar placed the device in my knitting bag, which is the traditional and de facto last-minute storage place when we're in frantic packing mode and we're running late to the airport.
Once we climbed into the TSA line, Skylar suddenly realized that "this google thing is definitely going to look like a bomb when it goes through the x-ray machine." This is because the google thing is a round device with several cords coming out of it.
He suggested that I remove it from my bag and send it through the scanner thing separately, which is something I probably would have done when I was young and scared of consequences. But about two months ago I finally hit the age where I'm too tired to worry about going to terrorism prison so I decided to just send the bag on through as is and pray to old jebuz that no one would bat an eye.
Bat an eye, no one did. I know this because I watched the x-ray machine guy while my bag went through. I could see it on the screen. It absolutely looked like a bomb. But he didn't notice because he was definitely not looking and was texting someone.
For a moment, I was relieved. But then I remembered that I didn't actually have a bomb and I was no risk to anyone and haven't been since way before the war and actually maybe I should be concerned that the TSA guy was just letting bags go through without looking at them? I mean, I'm not a terrorist. But what if Skylar is? I was about to get on a flight with this man!
As my head was still spinning from the TSA situation, Skylar began ordering tea at the post-TSA kiosk. I have tried to explain to this man on a number of occasions that tea is just hot water with tasteless shit floating in it. But he doesn't listen. Instead, he clears our bank account every day to buy gallons of it, which he then leaves all over our house to cool to room temperature before throwing them out.
After a moment of walking, Skylar holding a cup—large—I didn't know they even made cups in that size—I suddenly heard a yelp. The yelp was then replaced by a yell. Then he swallowed a scream to catch the yell that he swallowed to catch the yelp. I don't know why he swallowed the yelp. Perhaps he'll die.
All I do know is that apparently a small amount of liquid from that one old lawsuit lady McDonald's coffee landed on his hand and that caused him to jerk his hand which caused more water to come out and the next thing we knew, he was fully chucking the entire thing across the airport and screaming the f-word.
The scene. Oh, the scene this caused. He was automatically added the the cast of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
People stopped, dead in their tracks, due to this outburst. He issued an impromptu public apology to all of the onlookers. It was sincere and emotional. Politicians caught having affairs could learn something from him.
"At least you handled it with dignity and grace," I said to him as we retreated from the scene and toward our gate, with a knitting bag holding what was hopefully not a bomb.
~It Just Gets Stranger