The Lawsons did Dallas!

Jared's Jackpot
June 29, 2007

We're here. We made it to New England in one piece. Well, everything except our stroller made it here in one piece. The friendly gate-check baggage man delivered the stroller to us with one hand, the handle with the other, and a big-ass grin on his ugly mug of a face. I was like, "Thanks." He was like, "No problem. And don't forget, we're not liable for broken strollers unless they're in their original packaging. Have a great night."

Now here's my question. Who brings their stroller to the airport in its original box? Is anybody out there seriously that anal? That totally defeats the purpose and convenience factor of the stroller contraption. Sure...let me just drag my feisty toddler and this box that's too big to fit in my trunk all around the airport. Grrr...

Anywho, the stroller incident combined with a motionless hour on the tarmac, no tables in the Chicago Midway Airport food court, and then another 60 minute delay have left me with an overflow of blog material. But the most bloggable moment of all goes to Jared, my sweet, sweet, Mormon husband.

Our second flight, from Chicago to Hartford, was a Southwest Airlines flight. In case you're not aware, there is no assigned seating on Southwest Airlines, and since we have a kid under five we were the very first people to board the aircraft. So we walked on to the empty plane and had our pick of about 400 seats. Jared chose a nice row towards the front of the plane, let James have the window and decided he'd like to sit in the aisle seat.

So Jared sits down, makes himself comfortable, and begins to sift through everything in the seat back pocket--passenger safety card, barf bag, Southwest Airline magazine, Maxim Magazine, and SkyMall. Jared casually glanced through everything pretending not to notice the fact that he had just hit every straight male's jackpot--a forgotten copy of Maxim with a picture of Ali Landry wearing wet tissue paper on the cover. He acted just as disinterested in that publication as he was in the barf bag.

In case you're not familiar with Maxim, the theme of the magazine is basically sex, beer, women and gadgets. In case you're not familiar with the Mormon religion, the theme of the faith is basically no sexy magazines, no beer, but gadgets are ok.

I picked up the magazine and began to flip through the pages. I was all, "Jared, are you sure you're not interested in this magazine? Whoa...look at that bikini! Gosh, I can't tell what her tattoo says. I wonder if those are real?" Jared just ignored me and was like, "Since you are sitting next to me Amy, I swear I'd rather read National Geographic."

I'm sure Jared cursed my very existence for every mile of that flight. But he's a good man. A good husband. A good Mormon...at least when his wife is around.

But seriously, hats off to Jared. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that if I had found a deep fried Snickers bar in my seat back pocket, that little piece of heaven would have been chewed up and swallowed in two second flat--and I wouldn't have cared who was watching.