Facewash and Dental Hygiene are for Noobs

I lost my facewash in a skirmish with an airport official.  I didn't fight too hard as I'd just survived The Maze Runner and its sequel, and kind of expected him to leap forward and claw me with his zombie claws.  But I was very frustrated.  You could tell by the way I stared at him and repeated his words slowly.

He, unfortunately, took this to mean that my IQ was lower than a chimpanzee's and just chucked it.  Right in front of me.  After I'd had to throw away a bottle of water given to me on the plane!  By the way, all the bottled water they give you is recycled from Security - no one has the time or the bladder acreage to drink that much water.  It's all an international water-saving conspiracy.  I now call this process Amsterdam it all!

And you know why?  Because the container used to hold 175mL.  Never mind that it no longer did.  Never mind that it fit with my other items in the clear plastic bag provided for liquids/gels/aerosols.

I understand the point of following the rules, but there are rules and then there are Rules. 

During the last leg of the flight, I was caught in amber for longer than the mosquitoes in Jurassic Park.  I think I watched two movies and jerked up from sound sleep about three times - all within ten minutes.  Meanwhile, two older gentlemen across the aisle had given up all pretense of normalcy and were simply discussing their respective movies with their earphones and voices at full volume.  One of them was watching the plane’s journey, so I’m not sure how he could have so much input, but there you are.

After the interminably long line-up at Customs (during which a sign requested that I fill in an invisible Ebola symptoms card and an official in jazzy pants told me to take off my glasses and look at the screen – as those two directives are mutually exclusive for me, I pretended to adjust my glasses and scuttled farther away from her), the official seemed less interested in looking at my proof of yellow fever vaccine and more interested in warbling Hallelujah! at me in progressively louder tones with impressively less tune.

“Bonjour.  Hallelujahhallelujah!”

“Er, yes.”

“How are you.”

“I’m fine – how are you?”

“I’m blessed.  Hallelujah.  Halelujah... halleluJAH… HALLELU--“

While I don’t normally mind this level of devotion, facing it after fifteen hours in planes and airports was less than ideal, so I scuttled away to pick up my luggage – which arrived very quickly (though I was later to learn that one of my Africa’s Next Top Model beauty aids had exploded in one suitcase).  I was greeted in short order right at the gates by one of my co-facilitators and the area director.  I met them both with a shining smile containing relief and a horrible greenish-black thing, which I would only discover an hour after leering at them like a pirate with no dental insurance. 

You'd think that would be the end of my trials, but you'd be wrong.