Lost in Suburbia: In the airport, by the airport, with the airport

I am not the world's savviest technophile. This is one of the reasons I married my husband - so he could install all our software and fix the computers when they crash while I sit there with a look of sheer bewilderment on my face.

Having a techy husband also means that we have the latest, greatest, neatest stuff to make our Internet connections superfast and wireless. The problem, of course, is that this has also made us somewhat spoiled. When we go anywhere that is not as wired up the wazoo as we are at home, we get very cranky. Of course there are many things in the world much worse than not having WiFi. But when you have work to do on vacation, as my husband and I both did, and there is only one point of connection for the Internet, it can create some slight disturbance in the domestic cosmos.            

Since we were at Disney World, which is billed as the Happiest Place on Earth, we really did not want to shatter that reputation by squabbling over who gets to plug their computer in.            

So, in a burst of techy inspiration, my husband dashed out to the nearest electronics store and bought a wireless Internet router. The particular brand he bought was called an “AirPort,” which makes sense, I guess, since it sends the Internet signal through the air. All was well and good for the rest of vacation, and we were all happily wireless for five days.            

Then my husband left Disney to go directly on a business trip, and I was left to return home with the kids the next day. In an effort to travel light, he asked me to bring home a few of his things, including the new router.            

I packed the router in one of the carry-on suitcases and promptly forgot about it until we went through security. As the suitcase passed through the X-ray machine, an alarm went off and one of the security people grabbed the bag off the belt and approached me.            

“Is this your suitcase?” he asked accusingly as I frantically tried to get my belt, jacket and shoes back on, my laptop and toiletries back in my bag, the kids shoes and jackets back on them, the kids toiletries back in their bags and basically repack everything in five minutes what originally took me three hours to organize.            

“Yes,” I responded.            

“Do you have a DVD player in here?” he asked. I stopped buckling my belt and stared. I had no idea what he was talking about. We did not have a DVD player with us. And then suddenly it dawned on me that I had packed the router and it probably looked like a DVD player, and you were supposed to remove any DVD players from your bags.            

“Ohhh. No. It's not a DVD player, it's a, um, um ... .” I stalled. With all the tumult, I could not recall the word “router.” All I could come up with was the brand name.            

“It's an AIRPORT!” I declared.            

“What?”            

“It's, um, an AirPort,” I repeated dumbly. 

I knew he had no idea what I was talking about, but I was having a moment of temporary short-term memory loss and could not explain what was in the bag.            

“You're IN an airport,” he stated, still holding the bag.            

“I know,” I said. “But the THING is an AirPort.”            

“THIS is the airport!” he said gesturing around him            

“The AirPort is the thing in the BAG,” I exclaimed, gesturing to the bag.            

We both stared at each other. People behind me began to grumble as they waited to move through security while I had a war of semantics with the security guy.            

Finally, I threw up my arms in defeat and yelled, "Just search the damn bag, OK?"            

As he unzipped the bag and pulled out the machine, the word finally came to me.            

“It's a router! A ROUTER!” I yelled. “It's a router!” I exclaimed joyously to the next person to come through security. He looked at me with pity in his eyes.            

“Lady,” he said coldly, “you need a vacation.”  

For more Lost in Suburbia, read Tracy’s blog at www.lostinsuburbia.net.