When All Else Fails, Play Dead

The title is not my own. I wish I could claim credit, but one of my favorite TV characters belongs to a lodge whose motto is "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati," loosely translated at "when all else fails, play dead." Somehow that seemed to work this week, quite well I might add.

So, here goes. We were at the airport in Doha, ready to go to security to get all of our stuff converted into radioactive waste, doing our usual cruising past the guy standing there with the job of telling people their carry-on bags are too heavy, too big, too smelly, too ugly, too pretty, too many or too whatever else he can come up with. Normally this is a simple walk-by with a nice smile and a wave, but this guy meant business that evening. He made me weigh my carry-on bag, only to find it to be one kilogram heavy. My wife's bag -- same fate. So thinking quickly I told him, "No problem, I'll just put my laptop in my backpack." Oh, no you don't mister. You do and you'll have two bags of carry-on and you're only allotted one in economy. Oops.

Back to the drawing board. We slunk on back to the other side of a pillar to figure out what we were going to discard. Laptop? No. Other laptop? No. Medical device? No. And no time to run home to drop a backpack. What ever shall we do? Well, we did have some snack foods we packed for the trip, not knowing how readily safe food would be available in Bangkok in the touristy areas. I suppose we could each eat a pound of dried apricots and a half pound of roasted cashews. Not sure that I'm interested in being quite that regular that fast though, especially heading into the land of awesome curries and hot peppers. I just don't think my digestive tract would forgive me if I dropped two bombs like that in such a short period of time. I think they call that an appetite for destruction.

Now, mind you this has taken us mere minutes to tear all of our stuff apart and debate which piece would stay and which would become the bait to start an all-out mad scramble in the airport among the indigenous population. Then, much to our delight we noticed that the aforementioned carry-on bag Deputy Fife abandoned his post and left it in the hands of the ever capable and newly deputized Gomer Pyle. Now, not to come off as being overly opportunistic, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that a thought occurred to both of us. We'd both like to claim credit for initializing the thought, although I'm pretty certain that simultaneous mental spontaneity is a real and documentable phenomenon, but to whomever the credit goes suffice it to say that it just worked. I call it a stroke of genius, a merging of inspiration and opportunity, a bright and shiny moment in the lives of the downtrodden to rise up and take command of a bad situation.

And we did just that. We seized the moment, threw our stuff back into our bags, one kilo too heavy or not, and strode confidently toward the new smiling and friendlier looking security guy who didn't miss a beat in waving us on through toward the paradise that awaited us in the security scanner lines.

Yes, we were through. We had challenged fate and we had won. When all else failed, we played dead and waited for the circling vulture to lose interest in the too-large pile of carrion. In that one fleeting moment I truly believe that I made all of the members of the Possum Lodge proud. They are my kindred spirits now. My friends, with conviction like none other I stand with my hands raised in front of my chest and my fingers curled under like a nocturnal scavenger and proclaim "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati."