TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Happy Thanksgiving five days ago, I hope you had a good one, I HIGHly recommend Paula Deen’s “Not yo mamma’s banana pudding.” This dish would be included in my last meal on Earth.

Both my siblings came to New Orleans for the holiday, both by plane, from opposite coasts, on the busiest travel day of the year.

I’ve flown on many airplanes. I’ve been asked for ID (at age 23) for sitting in the exit row (minimum age: 16…FML).

I’ve lost luggage, I’ve gone through FULL BODY SCANNERS (what’s the big deal people??), I’ve peed in tiny stalls, I haven’t been able to fit my overstuffed luggage into the overhead bin and held up the line and had to “check it” à la Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents.

I’ve even met a B-list celebrity at an airport.

But I’ve never been too drunk to get on a plane. Probably because airport alchol is too damn expensive. Airport Chili’s in ATL? JETWAY HIGWAY ROBBERY!

My twin sister Joy’s ex-boyfriend, Mike, was too drunk to get on a plane, but he got on anyway.

Joy was dropping him off at 5 a.m. and he was still drunk from the night before and Joy had to give him specific instructions not to talk to anybody.

I wasn’t surprised. Mike loved vodka and he’d come over with a Jansport backpack with a big bottle of cheap vodka (FLEISCHMANN’S….UGH) and soda water and make drink after drink after drink.

You’d think a 5 a.m. flight would change this routine. I mean, I think it should have, because flying hungover suuuuuucks.

Not even SkyMall can help you when you’re nauseous and breathing recycled air and SERIOUSLY WHO EATS A TUNA FISH SANDWICH ON A PLANE?? (uh, for example).

Mike missed his 5 a.m. flight one Saturday morning to go home for his birthday, a flight his grandfather had paid for.
He got way too drunk the night before and slept through his 5 a.m. alarm clock. He called Joy at 11 a.m. or so to whine about it.

“Grandpa is sooooo pissed!” he said.

Joy called him a retaaaaard, helped him switch his flight, and told him that she would personally make sure he’d be up the next day for the Sunday 5 a.m. flight.

But Saturday night was a reggae festival at the park, and Mike snuck in vodka Fleischmann’s and got too drunk to even walk in a straight line back to the car.

Joy was furious with him, told him that he OBVIOUSLY didn’t care about grandpa’s feelings, and she let me and our friend, April, walk on either side of him, balancing him as we walked back to Joy’s car.

Mike spent the night at our house, so Joy could drive him to the airport, and when she shook him at 5 a.m. to get up, he got right up, wearing no shirt, put his backpack on and said, “Ok, LET’S GO!”

Joy stared at him.

“OK, you can’t go to the airport without a shirt on.”
“Yes I can.”
“No you can’t. You need to put on a shirt. Where is your shirt?”

I guess Mike didn’t feel like putting on the shirt he wore the night before, and didn’t think to open up his packed suitcase to get another one.

So, he walked over to Joy’s dresser and pulled out one of her small LSU T-shirts and put it on.

Joy laughed as Mike’s arms bulged out of the constrictive sleeves, and the shirt rode up like a midrift. The bottom of the shirt hovered around his belly button and you could see his nipples through the fabric.

“You’re really going to wear that to the airport?” Joy asked.

“Yes, let’s GO!” he said, clearly, still drunk.

Joy became concerned when he was incoherent all the way to the airport, so when they pulled up to the terminal, she instructed him not to talk to anyone.

“Don’t talk to the security people, don’t talk to the ticket agent, don’t talk to anyone,” Joy said.

(She’s very good at imitating Mike’s response to this request):

“JUUUUJHASSSSH,” he said.

Joy blinked. He tried again.

“JUUJUJUUSHHSH”

He took a breath.

“Joy,” he said very slowly, controlled. “I don’t know why you shink that I’m hammered.”

Then Mike got out of the car, walked inside the terminal and Joy came home to go back to sleep. She saw a text message from him when she woke up hours later.

“Made it on the plane, but security took my sunscreen,” he wrote.

“Well of course they did, it’s a liquid dummy,” Joy said aloud after reading it.

How Mike ended up flying halfway across the country working off a 12-hour drunk, wearing an uncomfortably small LSU T-shirt, is beyond me.

I forgot to ask him if he was still wearing it when grandpa picked him up at the airport, because that sounds like something I would have LOVED to see.

Threat level purple and gold.

-Jenny