My First Trip to Sea-Tac.

 There is a line in Liar Liar that really hits home with me. Jim Carrey's character is trying to tel the judge that he made a bad call and finally blurts out in exasperation, "Well, maybe you can tell that to the kids when they're adopted... by the Manson family!" And while I was neither adopted nor a Manson I did have somewhat unusual experiences growing up.

When I was ten or so my uncle came for a visit. This may or may not have been for my grandma’s funeral. Honestly, I don’t recall. My dad and I drove up to Seattle to get him from the airport at night because he was flying standby from overseas, I believe. My cousins may have been there as well. Again- not the impressive part of this story. 

I remember that SeaTac airport was HUGE. Come to think of it, I’d never seen an airport before so maybe it’s just perspective. Anyway, when my dad was going through the metal detector, it kept going off. Again and again the security person would ask him to check his pockets to see if he had anything metal. Eventually, the jostling of the dozen open matchbooks he had in the pocket of his vest (see vest below) caused them to ignite and flames to shoot out of his pocket. This *probably* wouldn’t have been so alarming for the security staff except that dad looked somewhat like Charles Manson. (see doppelganger below)

*Footnotes:

¹Upon arriving at our home, my uncle told us that he wanted to go to McDonalds for a Big Mac. No one knew where one was. Also, I was too shy to ask him what a Big Mac was. 

²Upon seeing this photo my little brother asked me if I had a second copy. Uh...It’s a POLOROID?