Is that a gun in your carry on or are you just thirsty?

This is a traveling parent’s story.

Time out, before I get to the "gun" details. Think of how much crap you have to lug, shlep, carry, drag, stuf and stash when you travel with kids. You get all organized and you work days in advance to pack a simple carry on for your little mile-high munchkins. Well, I have a tale of one such trip. One carry-on of well-planned items is all you really need for a handful of kids, right? Otherwise, you get all stressed and when meltdowns happen, you have five bags piled on the stroller and you look like a freaky sideshow...

Anyway, well, a few years ago, I took two kids cross country and I packed these goodies:

matchbox cars, including a mini-sized hershey's milk tanker truck
mazes
games
movies, etc.

I was expecting no problems as I traveled and I actually thought I had packed well in order to avoid problems.

So, I’m all fine as we get to the x-ray machine....waiting...m’am...waiting ...ma’mm is this your..?...waiting...yes I say

....look, it’sme and two kids, one baby one preschooler,....of course you can check it...


omg, what could be in there? something bad? something erroneously put in there? something illegal? No, luckily I was clear there...did I accidentally borrow something they didn't allow? something risque I would be really embarassed if he pulled from the luggage? what backpack do they have? is it an old bag from college? who knows...did someone borrow it from me and return it? I started to get nervous...I have no idea why they are gathering, phone-calling, pointing at the x-ray machine.

panic set in a bit as they looked at me, the screen, the supervisors...what is going on????

So, I’m waiting nervously and I am wondering....

more people, security...what did I possibly put in there? Now I am thinking, did I take their bag on a picnic and leave a watermelon knife or something absurd? Is this for real? OK, deep breath.


“M’amm we will be searching your bag....blank and nervous (also perplexed) looks staring in my direction.

Okay, cool.

So, by now I'm really stressed because they are concerned about something in my kids' carryon. Well, when they opened it (slowly and methodically) and went through its contents, they were perplexed to find a...

MATCHBOX HERSHEY MILK TRUCK (coincidentally about the size of a handgun) with a metal tank in the bottom of the bag!

see this image to imagine the shape of a small, black metal hershey tanker truck

They took it out and ran it again and said, it's this, this truck is what we saw...when I realized they thought the solid metal hershey milk truck looked like a solid metal gun I laughed...they didn't. They were annoyed about the whole thing...but obviously I was RELIEVED!!!!!

And that's just one of my many travel-with-kids stories....anyone else have something like this happen?