You have HOW many in your purse?

My parents came down this past weekend to celebrate an early Christmas with Max, Lucius, BOB and I, since we won’t be able to travel up to Syracuse this year (the one sure thing to make BOB a Christmas baby would be to travel anywhere that day!).  We thought it would be a nice outing for Max to take us on a tour of the Pentagon – yes, for those of you who work there I know it’s just an office building, but for the rest of us mortals it’s THE PENTAGON!

So we hop the metro and walk around to the correct weekend entrance.  Max signs us in, Dad and I dump our stuff on the x-ray belt and walk through the metal detector.  All is good.  Then it’s Mom’s turn.  She puts her stuff on the x-ray belt and walks through the metal detector…and the guard asks to go through her purse.  Thinking she left some nail clippers or a metal file or something in there, the rest of us just kinda watch the other guard who’s screening the two people behind us who have badges and are armed and notice that Mom has still not been cleared. 

The guard even calls in his supervisor and is pointing out something on the screen.  He’s pulling out two small bags that seem to be in the area identified on the monitor and suddenly Dad and I know what the problem is – Mom’s lipstick collection.  Have you ever actually looked at the shape of a lipstick tube?  It looks surprisingly like rounds for a large gun.  So here’s my mom, with her collection of 30 or so different shades, and here’s this security guard who is now laughing his head off asking “Do you really need all these” (Answer, “Yes, of course!”), and here’s my dad saying “Good thing she cleaned it out last week, she used to have more in there.” 

Parents.  Can’t take ’em anywhere!