Paranoia Personified

Unlike what many of you may be thinking, this has nothing to do with Fi or his parents' arrival. (Talking about which, all are here safe and sound and apparently not hit by jet-lag at all, as evidenced by the fact that they had the stamina to walk in, admire the house and the living-room curtains - which I believe I picked last year - and inspect the kitchen from top to bottom. I only wish Fi had sounded less flustered than he did in that thirty-second call which ended abruptly, without a goodbye. That's fine, I'm glad I heard from him at all.) In fact, I should have blogged about this incident nearly a week ago - it happened last Thursday - but I got carried away by the events of the weekend.

I was on my way to Fiville and was going through the security check at the airport. I had removed my shoes, jacket, cellphone, watch, laptop, etc, and placed them in the grey bins provided. I pushed them into the X-ray, all except the last grey bin, and was waiting behind another squat little elderly man in line to hit the "security doorway" (what do you call those things?). As he walked into the door, things started to flash and beep, and he realized he still had his cellphone in his hand. He took a step backwards, realized all his other stuff was already on the other side of the X-ray machine, looked around and saw me, smiled, and went, "Oh, I'll just put them here..." indicating my bin. I shook my head vehemently.

"Come on, it's just a minute..."

"No, no, no, no, no, no!!!", that was me in successively higher pitches. I couldn't have done it better if I'd been rehearsing as an operatic soprano for weeks. I was too aghast to say anything intelligible. The only thing I could think of was, what if there's something in that cellphone, and I'm caught because it's in my bin!?!? Oh, no, you don't! Besides, it wasn't like there was nothing else to put it in. I gestured towards the little bowls meant for keys and things, and pushed one towards him. He gave me this look that plainly said "Paranoid!"

When I recovered sufficiently from the shock of the look, I glanced around to find that everyone behind me in line also had the same look on their faces. I thought they'd be commiserating with me!

Well, never mind, at least I'm certain one person will read this entry and say, "Finally my instruction bears fruit!". Right, TM?