Easy Cheese: Public Enemy Number One

Today was the day that Mini Me left for her mission trip to Jamaica.  Preparing for this trip has made me realize just how involved the whole air travel process has become since 9/11.  Aside from the standard stuff, like making sure your suitcase stuffed with over 2400 crayons, 100+ dum-dums, and other miscellaneous VBS supplies doesn’t exceed the 50 pound weight limit, there’s the maze of items you can and cannot take in your carry-on.  Prohibited items include such seemingly innocuous things as Easy Cheese and hand sanitzer—or any liquid, gel or aerosol–in larger than a 3oz container.  It’s good to have a list of stuff like that, because I never would have suspected that Easy Cheese was an Al Qaeda approved terror device.  Perhaps they’ve planned to coerce the pilot into submission by threatening to put cheese on the wrong side of his saltines.

I need to know these things, because I might not figure out that something like that was contraband.  However, there are other items on the list.  Items that made me chuckle, because I thought, “Does anybody really need to be told that it’s not cool to pack that in their carry-on?”  Seriously.  Um, does anybody not know that their can of gasoline is NOT going to make it past security?  Or that dynamite and hand grenades are not okay—even in your checked luggage?  Or that meat cleavers, ice picks, and sabers may not be stashed in the overhead compartment?  Do they have a lot of trouble with people wanting to carry their axes and cattle prods onto the plane these days?  Sheesh!

But the worst part about this whole security business these days is that no long can you see someone all the way to the gate and watch them take-off.  So, there we were, saying goodbye in the security line.  It went something like this:

Me: “It says your hand sanitizer has to be in a Ziploc—did you put it in a Ziploc?” 

Mini Me: “I don’t know.” 

Me: “Okay, where is it?” 

Mini Me: “In the last zipper in my backpack.” 

Me (trying to dig through a wad of smashed granola bars in an overstuffed backpack pocket): “I can’t find it…which zipper?” 

Mini Me: (exasperated sigh as she takes off her backpack) “Here, let me look.  Here it is, in a Ziploc.” 

Me: “Okay good.  Well, it’s your turn.  Be good.  I love you.” 

Hubster: “I love you..See ya in two weeks.”

 

I waited to cry until we got to the parking garage.

 

 

 

Saltines & Marital Strife

You know, Hubster and I don’t argue much.  Most of the time, we’re a whole lot like two peas in a pod.  But sometimes, we nearly come to blows over the most basic matters of right and wrong. 

Why can’t he understand that the proper way to eat a saltine is with the salt side down, and the flat side up?  He says that the salt side is the “top” and should face up. Therefore anything you put on it (in this case mayo & cheese) should go on the salty side. 

Clearly, he couldn’t be more wrong. 

I tried to make him see the error of his ways.  “It’s like a hamburger bun,” I said, “the rounded part is the top and the flat part is where you put the food.”  Unmoved, he replied, “A bun is cut in half—that’s why it has a flat part.  You can’t cut a cracker in half, so the stuff should go on top.”

Not that it makes any difference to me if he wants to make all his cheese and crackers upside down, but he was making mine, too.  And having all my crackers wrong side up is disturbing to me in a way that few things are.  The only thing that bugs me as much is the way he folds towels (also wrong) crosswise instead of lengthwise.  When it’s lengthwise, it’s ready to hang on a towel bar.  When it’s crosswise (WRONG) it has to be refolded to hang on the towel bar.  Need I even state that is grossly inefficient?  (And wrong.)

And as if to prove just how doggone belligerent he is (and believe it or not, as I’m typing this he’s telling me that I’ve spelled belligerent wrong in spite of the fact that spell check is happy as a clam) he came up here, plopped down and proceeded to correct my translation of his argument.  Then he decided he’d show me how to spell belligerent, and looked it up in the dictionary.  I’ll give you one guess who was WRONG.

So, I’ve decided to let him have this next paragraph to make his case for the upside down cracker configuration:

The cracker, like the bun, has a flat bottom because it is baked on a flat surface with the rounded (top) side up.  The bun, when used as intended, has an exposed rounded side not because it is turned upside down, but because it is sliced through the middle and the contents are placed in the center leaving the rounded top up and exposed.  For the bun/cracker comparison to be valid, the cracker would need to be sliced through the middle and have the mayo and cheese placed between the halves.

Is anybody still reading?  Helllooo…it’s me again.  Yeah, I know.  See what I live with?  Every day.  For-ev-er. 

So now that we’ve both said our respective piece, it’s your turn.  Should the saltine go salt side up, or salt side down?  Which of us is right, and which of us, despite our fancy-pants argument, is yet again wrong?