"Passengers must avoid carrying things without their knowledge."
For some reason, I begin to laugh hysterically. I'm at the airport, of course, when I hear this announcement. I'm on my way to another booksigning in Denver, or is it Missouri, or Austin? I dunno. It's the weekend so I'm going wherever every other tired person at Gate 2 is going. Anyway, they make this announcement several times. They keep reminding us not to leave our luggage unattended. I wonder how you can avoid doing something without your knowledge. Where's Freud when you need him? Not that I want to talk to a dead guy, but I bet he'd know.
I think about looking in my carryon to see if I have something I didn't have knowledge of having. I'm sure there's a stray nickel or an old luggage tag in there. Does that count? In fact, there are several cards and scraps of paper in my wallet I haven't looked at in years. Expired memberships. Frequent diner cards. Old receipts. I don't know what they are anymore. Do they count if I have no knowledge of what they say, but I know they exist in a relative, cosmic sense?
"Avoid carrying things without their knowledge." Whose knowledge? I know about my medicine but do the pills know about me? Can they see anything through that brown bottle? Should I introduce myself? Hello migraine pills. I'm Moe. I swallowed your friends but don't hate me. I'm truly sorry. Let's be friends.
And what if someone put something in my carryon I had no knowledge of but I open it and discover some previously unknown entity. Now I'm knowledgable. Will they arrest me if I tell someone in security? Ignorance is bliss I think.
I leave my bag zipped and continue laughing. The man next to me stands and walks away shaking his head. There's a stain on his pants. I bet he has no knowledge of it. Hmmm.
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