Hoo boy. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humor and know how to laugh at myself about these things. Kent and I had a hearty laugh today at my expense. And he was most definitely laughing at me, not with me.

As we were driving home from church this morning, Kent brought up a story that was on CBS Sunday Morning about privacy, surveillance, and how every move you make online and in person is being tracked somewhere, by someone. My reply was that it doesn’t bother me. I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral and I have nothing to hide. You might even say I’m boringly squeaky clean (well, except for that one speeding ticket…). So I just don’t really care if I’m captured on an ATM or traffic camera or if some database somewhere knows what websites I visit or any of a million other details about my family, finances, spending habits, medical history, or anything else in my life. As long as the information isn’t being hacked into and used to steal my identity, the fact that some anonymous person out there might know these things doesn’t change anything for me. I do take the necessary shredding precautions with my personal data at home, but otherwise I don’t worry about this stuff too much. There’s not much I can do about it anyway and I have bigger fish to fry.

But this morning I was feeling impish so just for sport, I decided to shock my dear husband with the fact that somewhere out there, I might have an FBI record. It’s true. On a family vacation to Spain some number of years ago, we were on a flight that was diverted back to New York in the dead of night due to a “security incident,” which turned out to be a bomb threat from an unknown passenger aboard the aircraft. An army of fire trucks and ambulances lined the runway with their flashing lights in preparation for the worst, but we landed safely and taxied to a remote location very far from the terminal, with those flashing lights fanned out behind us reminiscent of O. J. Simpson’s slow speed chase. The FBI was brought in. Everyone on the plane was required to personally identify their luggage on the tarmac in the presence of bomb-sniffing dogs, then herded to a holding location and asked to complete a written statement about anything suspicious they may have seen. My best educated guess is that the FBI now has a dossier on me with at least that one piece of paper. For a few brief hours I, along with all my fellow passengers, was a suspect. We weren’t even allowed to go to the bathroom without an FBI escort.

The rest of the conversation went something like this.

Kent: When did this trip happen?

Me: I don’t remember. I think maybe sometime in high school?

Kent: (Hysterical laughter)

Me: What? What’s so funny?

Kent (hurt): I was there! It was May 1997. I was with you the whole time and you don’t even remember!!!

Oops.

No wonder I had never thought to tell him this story before. Let me state right now for the record that he is absolutely right. He was with me through the whole traumatic experience. This was an oops of gigantic proportions. It was a family vacation, but one taken after Kent and I were married, so he was of course there too. Much apologizing and soothing his hurt feelings ensued, along with quite a bit of laughter and teasing about my early onset Alzheimer’s. Plus the suggestion from Kent that I start taking vitamins because maybe I have not been eating right on my diet, and it might have addled my brain. I’ll be making up for this one for a very long time.

In my admittedly shaky defense, I’ve been to Spain several times growing up because it is my father’s homeland and part of my heritage, and most of his family is there. After a while the trips all kind of blend together. Obviously I would never forget that Kent and I had been to Spain together with my family; I just forgot it was THAT trip. But I do now remember hitting all the newsstands in Madrid with him, looking in the English language papers for mention of the incident, and finally finding it in USA Today.

And the sad proof that I have become addicted to blogging? The laughter had not yet subsided ringing in our ears when I said the first thing that popped into my head, “I think I just got my blog story for today.”