How Do You Get Recombobulated?

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airport, airport security, discombobulate, Florida, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, humor, Mitchell Airport, sunshine, Susie Lindau, travel

I’m not a fan of airport security. I don’t know many people who are.

We recently flew from Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to catch our connecting flight to Tampa, Florida.

I was in pre-vacation mode, ready to let my hair down in the sunshine when I spotted a sign hanging just past one of the checkpoints at Mitchell Airport. I actually stopped and did a double-take, then started laughing. 

Recombobulation Area?? What a hoot!

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “discombobulate” as “to upset or confuse.” I decided “recombobulate” meant “to clear up or reassemble.”

Seems I wasn’t the only one to notice this cool sign with the made-up word. In the July, 2008 edition of the Journal-Sentinel, the sign – and the reaction it caused – got its own article.

And travelers can identify, including Melissa Fullmore, who called airline travel “a stressful time.”

I agree! In Atlanta, I got barked at by a security guard for not staying with my carry-on during the screening process.

“Stay with your luggage, ma’am. Stay. With. Your. Luggage!”

Right after that, another guard pulled me aside and swabbed my hands. She didn’t even tell me why – just pulled me aside, told me to hold up my hands, and scratched some paper thingy over my palms and swiped it under a scanner. I tried to keep my cool through all this, but really, when they can’t even tell you why you’re being singled out, I started feeling all prickly inside and decided to ask.

Seems the scratchy paper thingy was “a precautionary measure to detect explosive residue, ma’am.”

The last explosive thing that happened to me was when I gave birth to our last child, almost 17 years ago. Sigh…

At that point, I really needed a Recombobulation Area, but large as it is (4,700 acres) Hartsfield-Jackson didn’t even have one single teensy corner set aside to get recombobulated.

It’s always fun to find new words, and I’d like to thank Susie Lindau over at Susie Lindau’s Wild Ride, who came up with some pretty cool new words for 2015.

Eventually, I got recombobulated on my own, and we made it to Florida in one piece.

St. Petersburg, Florida

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The Power of Words

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Arabic, blessing, Egypt, Greece, history, Italy, language, power of words, travel, traveling, words, writing

Think about the last time words moved you. A quote that had you reaching for pen and paper; wedding vows that made your heart stop, or a speech that rocked you to greater goals.

In September, 2011, we took a trip to Italy and Greece. Many moments there were powerful in their own right – treading the same stones that Julius Caesar had at the Roman Forum? Hard to wrap my mind around. Dining in the shadow of the Colosseum? Everything tasted better with such a spectacular view!

Our view of Athens from the Acropolis

And walking between the immense columns of the Parthenon, staring out over the rooftops of Athens left me silent. Do modern-day Athenians take this view for granted? Forget that one of the world’s most iconic images looms above, day after day, watching?

One of the most powerful moments came on the last day of the trip. We woke, excited to be finally heading home, but torn by the the whisper of unrealized opportunities: new foods to try, side streets to explore and the endless, thrilling possibilities of just one more day in a foreign country.

In a room overlooking the Aegean Sea, we gathered to say goodbye to our traveling companions, scattering across the world to homes in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and the United States. In the middle of goodbyes, the lady from Egypt stopped me.

Until now, we hadn’t exchanged much more than pleasantries, but I had seen her kindness to others: a woman from California lacked the necessary shoulder covering to enter The Vatican, so the Egyptian lady loaned her a beautiful scarf; she ate meals with different people and carried on friendly conversations with each person.

Aegean Sea on our last day in Greece

But now it was my turn. She grabbed my hands and started speaking in what I assumed was Arabic. She knew English – I heard her accented English many times on our trip – but for some reason, she spoke to me now in Arabic.

As I stood there, holding her hands, feeling the power of her words, a sudden comprehension flooded me with the knowledge that this was a blessing. I felt the power of that blessing reach across cultures, languages, and generations, straight from her heart and through my hands.

She finished, smiled, and walked back to her husband. I opened my mouth to call her back, to ask her to repeat the words in English, but I stopped.

The language didn’t matter; the power of her words did.

When have words changed you? Left you a little bit different than you were before you heard them?

It’s a Bad Idea to Lick a Metal Pipe in Winter…

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president aaron burr, travel

It was inevitable – put a bunch of grade-schoolers on the playground in the middle of winter, and someone was bound to stick their tongue to the basketball pole. That a boy wasn’t the victim is a little surprising – this time, little Lizzy succumbed to peer pressure, and when her tongue didn’t break free of its icy prison, the janitor was summoned. I can just see him, rolling his eyes as he lugged on his heavy jacket, heating up a pitcher of water to free the little second-grader. By lunchtime, rumors were rampant that if you approached the basketball pole from just the right angle, a small bit of tongue remained, frozen until spring for those brave enough to approach.

Ah, grade school memories. That aside, it forms the basis for today’s lesson – a befuddling homonym that takes several forms.

Metal is what Lizzy shouldn’t have licked. That shiny material, formed from metallic elements in the periodic table of elements is one form of today’s tricky terms.

On the other hand, boys are involved in this next example, as we turn back the clock to when Vice President Aaron Burr killed former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Sigh…men have felt the urge to rise up and defend their honor for centuries, and this was no different. Hamilton had defamed Burr publicly, and Burr, desirous of proving his mettle, charged Hamilton to a duel.

Tensions boiled over on July 11, 1804, when the two met in New Jersey. Onlookers spread several versions of the event, and in the end, Hamilton died the following day. For Burr, proving his mettle, or quality of strength, wasn’t such a hot idea, and it probably went a long way toward outlawing dueling, which happened by the end of the 19th Century.

For little Lizzy, Aaron and Alexander, it might have been best had there been a nosy neighbor peering from behind her lace curtains, who would have meddled in affairs just a bit. Every neighborhood seems to have one, and think of the results had there been a Concerned Citizen to stop them from their wayward actions. Lizzy would have that little scrap of tongue back, Aaron wouldn’t have had to leave the country, and Alexander could have returned to his family. History is rife with “if onlys” and perhaps if someone had spoken up, we could  have awarded a medal to the brave soul who changed history, both on the playground and on the dueling field.