The TSA has a Sense of Humor: 10 Things I learned in San Antonio

The staff at MojoFiction recently decided to fly to San Antonio to visit our brother. It was his wife’s birthday and you have to celebrate family occasions. Here is what we learned:

1. Don’t sit in the back row of the Airplane – We knew we couldn’t recline our seat, but we were willing to go with it to get an aisle seat on the full flight. However, to the surprise of scientists everywhere, United Airlines has discovered how to fold space, reducing the normal economy-class leg room to a space that can only be described using quantum physics. This comes on the heels of Stephen Hawking’s shocking discovery that a carry-on bag over 8-inches deep creates a gravity-well that redirects $30 dollars from your wallet to the airline’s pension fund. At the end of the flight, we looked at the guy across the aisle and said, “This last row is something.” He glared back, not with the look that says our shared experience has bonded us together like brothers; that our epic tale will pass into legend and told in song in the finest ale houses across the land. No. His look said, “If you ever mention the back row to anyone, I will f—ing kill you.”

2. If someone says it’s about 2 miles, they’re half right – Our first day in San Antonio was Thursday, so everyone was working. Our ever helpful brother mentioned that there was a Barnes and Noble about 2 miles from the house if we felt like getting out during the day. So, we slipped a laptop into our backpack to take the short hike so we could do some writing at the bookstore. By the time the search party found us, foraging for food deep in the brush, soiled and incoherent, we were in no condition to write. We sat down in the bookstore’s cafe, switched our laptop on and fell asleep.

3. Our brother has been married for 20 years and still doesn’t know what to get his wife for her birthday – Ha ha!

4. WTF is fruit boba??? – We here at MojoFiction like to think we are worldly, but we had never heard of boba (sometimes called bubble tea). If you are unfamiliar, fruit boba is found on Bobba Fett’s home planet and are little edible balls of fruit juice and other additives that look suspiciously like paintballs. We’re adventurous, so we dumped some blueberry boba onto our self-serve coconut frozen yogurt. As we bit into the fruity desert we couldn’t help but wonder, “You know what would taste exactly like this blueberry boba? Real blueberries.”

5. Cute puppies are the offspring of Cthulu – Our brother’s family has new a puppy. The pup is only a few months old, cute and energetic, and he knows how to get into the kitchen cabinets already. When he has to relieve himself, he’ll happily do it wherever, especially on your shoe. If you lay down a pad, he’ll happily pee on the floor right next to it. And it turns out that his little puppy teeth can happily flay the skin off your hand in a nanosecond in a violent action the veterinarian calls “playing.” But we were targeted for destruction, we’re sure of it, because, afterward, he posted on his Doggy Facebook that he “got another one.”

6. Doggy Facebook is a real thing. Google it. Keep searching the internet until you find it. Don’t stop, not even for a bathroom break. Just keep looking.

7. San Antonio has the Alamo – We did not go there.

8. San Antonio has a beautiful river walk – …we didn’t go there either.

9. Living in San Antonio – is really just a way to keep yourself grounded between visits to the Austin, whose roaming packs of wild hipsters can smell your Android phone and Starbucks coffee 3 miles away. And they can smell your fear.

10. The TSA has a sense of humor – MojoFiction does not fly often, so we were still the under the impression that the scanning booths they use blast you with unobtanium mined from the moon planet of Pandora. When the TSA guys tried to explain that the new technology wouldn’t murder us, we politely asked if they were trained in science. In fact, we asked this several times. To their credit, the TSA did not rise to the bait. They politely chuckled and explained the machine. We’re adventurous, so we stepped in. Despite the additional foot now growing out of our right thigh, we’re pretty sure the technology is safe. Afterwards, we walked to our gate with a smile, knowing that the three TSA employees would one day sit together at the local pub while they looked back on their lives and they would say, “Remember that guy who asked if we knew science? Yeah … he was an idiot.”