Kyle Hepp

September 26, 2009

This is my group blog post originating from Eileen‘s blog!

Also participating — text copied directly from Eileen. Because I’m a lazy mother trucker. And because I’m on vacation.

Angry redhead tells her story of shame and woe here.

Clare had written one way back in April (seems like I’m late to the party) here!

Emily had a bit of a close call that she talks about here!

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We’ve been flying Ryanair for all of our flights through Europe. This means that we’ve had to fly out of really, and I mean REALLY tiny airports. There are some benefits to this. You move through the x-ray machine line at the speed of light. You don’t have to walk for miles through a humongous airport carrying your bags. However, the downside to all of this is that when you become a threat to security every passenger on your flight knows it.

We were sitting at Beauvais Airport, about an hour outside of Paris. Our bags were checked and we were just waiting to board when we hear over the loudspeaker, “Will passenger Kyle Hepp please come to the main desk. We repeat, Kyle Hepp to the main desk.”

We approach the main desk and the man immediately starts talking to Seba addressing him as “Monsieur Hepp,” until we are finally able to make him understand that I’m actually Monsieur Hepp. He explains that were just going to have to go with a staff member, there’s been a small problem with my bag.

Then a big burly man in a policeman type outfit walks up. He glares at us. He breaks the silence by asking in a booming voice, loud enough for everyone in the tiny airport to hear, “DO YOU HAVE A CAN OF GAS IN YOUR BAG????”

Ummmm….WHAT?!? Maybe a little something got lost in translation there.

“No monsieur, I do not.”

He looks at me and with a hatred in voice reserved only for evil blond suspects of acts of terrorism, says, “Follow me.”

We do. He leads us into a little room with no windows. My purple backpack is sitting on a table wrapped in plastic. It’s vibrating loudly and the other man in the room looks scared. I laugh and tell them it’s my toothbrush. They don’t look like they think I’m telling the truth and one of them motions to me to open my bag.

I do and it is. I think the two security men were hoping it was a vibrator.