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IN FOCUS: ARTICLE |
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My Parents Found My Condoms
by Dan, 12.01.98
All the guests at Club Med left the resort together, and the tiny airport clamored with impatient tourists. Not much left to say, my family shuffled slowly, silently toward security. Every five or 10 minutes the line would shuffle a few feet and stop.
"What? Are they strip-searching everyone?" My stepfather leans over to kiss my mom. Restless, I step aside and peer ahead.
At the front, security guards are randomly stopping outgoing passengers to search their bags. I panic ...
Because, deep down, underneath my dirty laundry, underneath a torn copy of Catcher in the Rye lies a brown paper bag in which, ever optimistic, I had hidden a box of condoms. Twelve condoms. (If the time had finally come to lose my virginity, I was sure I would need at least a dozen.)
In front of me — mom and Tony holding hands, my step-brother Michael reading a tennis magazine, and the nice older couple who had offered to take me to dinner when I entered college in the fall.
Behind me — two sisters, one a freshman in college, the other still in high school. Mike and I had spent half the week working up the nerve to approach them, the other half talking trash after we were coolly rejected. The younger one, gracious now that she's safely leaving, smiles at me. I blush.
The line creeps forward. I try to act casual, pull out my book, put it back. The older couple saunters through security.
"Come back soon!" The guard kindly touches the gentleman's shoulder.
Michael never looks up from his tennis magazine, breezes through the doorway. Mom and Tony offer their bags, and the man declines to check them.
"It's OK, have a nice flight home now."
I step behind them. A hand reaches across my chest.
"May I see your bag please?"
"Excuse me?"
"Your bag. I need to look inside."
"Oh. Sure." I step around, try to block my family's view. They're watching, amused from the other side of the checkpoint. Instead I stare at the girls.
"Nervous?" The man unzips my duffel bag, pulls out a few smelly shirts, my bathing suit.
"No." I lean forward. "You don't have to take that out. It's nothing."
But because this is airport security, they have to take everything out of the bag, one by one and inspect it. Next thing I know my bright box of condoms is being pulled out of my bag for everyone to see. The security agent puts it to the side with all the other items without even raising an eyebrow.
Ears buzzing, I stuff my clothing inside, condoms now on top. I avoid the girls behind me and plow through the doorway. My family has moved onward, gracious but obvious in their attempt to leave me alone, pretend they'd seen nothing.
But they had. And I wait.
Having a sarcastic family like mine I waited for someone to make a comment. For months I'm going to be needled, reminded of my humiliation. And my mom — she must be furious! I must have somehow let her down.
Michael breaks the ice first, whispering as I sit to wait for our flight. "That sucks. Too bad you didn't use any, huh?"
Then Tony, as we walk over to the newsstand together, "Hey, that was smart thinking to bring those. Never know what might happen at Club Med. Next time just stash them in your suitcase instead."
And that's it. Never another word. No teasing, no lectures, no punishment. It was amazing, truly amazing that they could be so cool. Who knew?
Updated July 2002. |
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