Blunt force trauma

I recently went on a business trip to San Jose California. As usual…I brought more than enough knitting to occupy my time on the flight and during my evenings at the hotel just in case for some miraculous reason my 50 pages of notes for my histopathology final exam was not enough entertainment. The trip went smoothly, it was actually productive, the team I worked with were good people, I ate well, and I slept well considering I wasn’t in my usual bed with Mr. Rich, Dale, and Fred. So…all went well. Thursday early morning (like 5:00 am early) I awoke, ready to go through the usual airline ordeal so I could happily fly home to my family. I queued up in line at the security checkpoint, put my belt, my bag, my jacket, my shoes in the dirty gray bins and sent my belongings through the x-ray machine, knitting and all. I stood on the other side waiting for my stuff, and my stuff did not go through. The x-ray guard was intently checking the x-ray contents of my bag with greater duration than the other passengers’ belongings. Oh no, I thought, this is it, he’s going to pull up all my knitting and pull out all my dpns which would cause my mom’s birthday jaywalker socks to unravel. Then he will probably wave them in the air in self-righteous indignation and announce that pointy wooden sticks were not allowed on the aircraft, and I, a persecuted knitter would be thought of as a terrorist with intents to skewer fellow passengers and be forced to withstand hateful glances during my 5 ½ hour trip home.

My bags came through, and the guard followed stating with much official-ness that he needed to further inspect my bag. Sure I said, let him do his job I thought. So he dug around, and as he did so I kept expecting needles to fly out and tempers to rise…but no, instead, he pulled out my nosteppinde. He raised it up, looked at it oddly and probably thought “hmmm, wooden dildo”. I echoed his thoughts “hmmm wooden dildo” and said outloud “umm, yeah, that’s a yarn ball winder”. “I know what it is” he said defensively. Okay, geeze, I had no idea that he would have a clue about what a beautifully turned walnut stick could possibly be for. Despite his affirmation that he knew what it was and that it wasn’t some weird, perverted, midevial thing he proceeded to inspect it with such seriousness, waving it in the air, and swinging it downward in a swift motion as he imagined someone…maybe me, probably me…wielding the thing with such force to crack skulls while on a plane thousands of feet above the mid-west with intent to take over the flight for evil purposes or for fun, who knows. He couldn’t decided, he had to bring it to his security pal for further inspection and deliberation and security pal asked “well, does it pass?” and guy says “yeah,” and security pal said “then it passes”.

How to wind a ball of yarn with a nostepine.