Marty's Bon Mots (Selections found in: Glad You Asked)

The Trip that Almost Wasn't

It’s been about three months now, so I can now speak of it as rationally as I am able.

As some of you are already aware, my brother and his family live in Las Vegas. Although it’s all but an annual event, we oftentimes attend my brother’s Thanksgiving family reunion, gala and gustatory marathon.

We love going to those things for two hopelessly obvious reasons. First of all, and no offense meant, dear brother, but it’s Vegas. Bad mouth Vegas as much as you want, but I think Las Vegas is possibly the most insane place on earth. Hence it’s particular appeal to me. I don’t gamble. Well, let me qualify that. I sit around and play cheap slots, but that’s about it. But I love Vegas anyway. Why? Because it’s so honest. There is no hype spouted by the Las Vegas chamber of commerce regarding the wonderful weather or the myriad of business opportunities, or the golf, or community spirit or, frankly, anything cerebral. Las Vegas stands with arms folded and says clearly and unabashedly, “We have no taste. We have no class. We don’t care about you or your dog or your family. We are here and we exist for one purpose and one purpose only: to take your money.” So whilst ensconced within Las Vegas, I watch the craziness unfold around me. We go to shows. We go to buffets. We people watch and drink and shop. An adult Disneyworld in the middle of the stinking desert.

The second reason we love to go to Vegas is that we get to mingle with the rest of my insane family. All of us are oddballs. In many cases, many of us are oddballs on several levels. Look at who’s writing this, after all. So there are always lots of stories and even more opinions. Lots of raised voices, finger pointing, name calling, laughter, yelling, jokes, live music, singing and drama. All of this is, of course, underscored with the ever and overwhelming presence of food. Some of this is prepared. Some of this appears in cans or jars. No matter. It’s there and then it disappears within someone’s face.

In other words, we are more fortunate than your average garden variety Vegas visitor because we have the added attraction or diversion (you pick) of mixing family with debauchery.

And this is the Vegas atmosphere to which my son has been exposed for many many years. He was actually considering a pre-paid Vegas outing for himself and a friend, as a twenty first birthday present. This never came to pass for a variety of complex reasons best left explained within another vehicle.

This year, actually it was last year at this point, we all planned to go it again. And so we all planned. The kids are more or less independent and they have lives, agenda and plans of their own. So the comings and goings revolved around themselves as opposed to a singular point of reference. There were, as I recall, at least two hotels and two sets of car rentals and a number of different and complex sets of arrival and departure times. The kids are too big to share a room with Mom and Dad so two of them had their own room to themselves. My daughter had to leave early which meant that my son would have his own room at the Rio for several days. Not bad for your average 22 year old male. So before hand, and I credit this bit of brilliance to my ultra creative wife, we invited my son’s oldest friend in the world to substitute as my son’s Rio roommate after our daughter’s early departure. After considering this proposal for several full seconds, Liam readily acquiesced and was able to pull together the necessary funds for an economy fare to Vegas.

And so after my daughter’s having left, we the family collected Liam at McCarram. Liam and my son spent a bit of time with my family. But most of the time, the two of them spent their waking moments cruising and prowling amongst the bright lights of impropriety and temptation beckoning throughout the Vegas strip. And they succumbed willingly and happily losing money while gathering a lifetime of stories.

But Tuesday morning arrived. The predetermined time at which we would all leave the hotel, return the car and fly homeward.

Slight digression here. All this took place at that point in time when airport security was in the media full blast. Seems that there were supposed to have been installations of new obtrusive and invasive big brother type full body scanning types of gizmos to which one would have to subject oneself prior to allowing yourself the privilege of cramming yourself like so many sardines amongst others of the great unwashed. In other words, in order to be on time, you had to arrive at the airport even earlier.

The hotel was satisfactorily left. The car was returned in a timely manner. There were no mishaps of any kind regarding the car rental shuttle bus. The security line at 6:45 that morning was not exactly your basic Sunday traipse in the park, but all of us have seen much worse.

When we were just about to allow ourselves to be confronted by the underpaid TSA staff member, all of us whipped out the necessary paperwork. Everyone, that is except our boy. I quizzically turned to him, with the wordless interrogatory, “Sup?”

He suddenly became ashen and wide eyed. Now we all stood and eyed him with wordless interrogatories and he responded, “Oh shit!!” Now we all stood and waited silently with wordless interrogatories but with our eyes, otherwise weighted with morning ennui, now widened. He explained, “I think my wallet must still be at the hotel!”
The gravity of this news was not lost upon any of us. In fact, the cartoon safe from the building’s upper floor fell upon us instantaneously! No wallet, no driver’s license. No driver’s license, no photo ID. No photo ID, deep shit.

6:45 am in a McCarran airport security line is generally neither the time nor the place where the act of philosophical waxing falls upon me naturally. And so it did not. However, reality has a unique habit of forcing logic upon me. So as my son intoned niceties such as, “Oh shit!” and “What do I do?” my steel trap reserve of logic and order sprung into overtime and instead of sparring my son’s expository with clever, and readily available, bits of repartee such as, “You fucking idiot!” or “Comes from your mother’s side of the family” I found myself calming down and delivering sensibly placed orders such as, “Call the hotel and see if they can locate the wallet” and, “we need to explain this to security.” And so we did.

We were sufficiently early that the prospect of jumping through the necessary security hoops did not add additional stress to the jolt that we had all experienced. However, the prospect of jumping through additional security hoops held neither attraction to our situation nor did it provide added allure to our son’s personae.

As you might imagine, non violent security issues are run of the mill sorts of fare for TSA. And so we lost our place in line and were confronted with a bleary eyed but otherwise rather understanding TSA supervisor who advised, no surprise to any of us, that there was a procedure to handle this type of situation and we would, as we expected, jump through these procedural hoops. After having explained the situation, it became obvious to all, that the young man was, in fact, our boy, and that he had, in fact, misplaced his wallet and it was still probably somewhere in the Rio. As it turned out, by this time, Josh was able to contact the hotel security folk who actually located the wallet and indicated that they would have no problem whatsoever in mailing the otherwise errant wallet back to us. And so they did. Several days later at home we did receive the wallet from the Rio, driver’s license and all.

But in the mean time, Josh had to fill in some blanks and answer some questions. Address and phone numbers were provided accordingly. So far, so good. Now the TSA person punched in our particulars and was in receipt of even further of our particulars, thus spurring on further questions. Before she started in with the questioning she explained, “Mom and Dad, I’m about to ask Josh here some questions. Please stay here, but please do not answer of the questions for him. And so she began.

“What is your mother’s birthday?” “How old is your father?” “What is your sister’s middle name?”

We all stood slack jawed as my son mawkishly lowered his eyes lower and lower after responding to each of these otherwise innocuous questions with, “I dunno.”

This time, my wife became decidedly un-philosophical and, security issues be damned, expressed her ire rather demonstrably. I could detect a veritable diatribe just itching to sprint and springboard forward that were all going to pronounce our son a self centered, myopic, lazy, selfish, egocentric child. However, all that came out was, “WHAT?” I said nothing. However, my teeth were clenched, my face turned redder and I stared heavenwords.

The TSA supervisor recognized the symptoms and pre-empted what would invariably have turned into a particularly juicy filicide. She strongly urged for us to go forward to our gate and wait for sonny boy on the other side.

Liam went with us and tried to assuage the two of us with a peace offering of two of Starbucks’ finest. About twenty minutes later, sonny boy appeared casually sauntering down the runway casually eyeing the appropriate gate for him to inhabit.

He sheepishly met our steely stares and kept himself quiet for the duration.

The flight itself was uneventful. The ride home was uneventful. The unloading of the limo was uneventful and Josh crept upstairs and remained quiet.

At least that was mature and reasoned.

posted by Marty Brounstein @ 1:39 PM