7XMOM: Me and my Bojangles

This is a follow-up to my confessions about my fear of flying and concerns still another reason why I find flying across the country stressful. That reason is biscuits. Bojangles to be exact, with my apologies to the other fine biscuit restaurants in the area.

The problem is that two of my kids right now live in Utah, and Utah doesn’t know the joy of biscuits. It’s true, or as the Bojangles manager in Yanceyville, N.C., said when I stopped there last week and told her about it, “That’s just insane.”

It is what it is, though, and every time before I go to Utah, I get the biscuit-begging call.

“Are you bringing biscuits?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to travel across country with biscuits taking up what little space I have.”

My best arguments never work, though. This time I even heard a new argument from my three-months pregnant daughter why I just had to tote BoBerries across 2,000 miles:

“You mean you won’t even bring biscuits to your poor pregnant daughter who can’t find anything to eat that doesn’t make her sick?”
She had me at “pregnant.”

So I stopped in Yanceyville on the way to the airport — sorry, Danville Bojangles — and ordered a dozen BoBerries. Then I wanted the frosting in a separate container so they wouldn’t get yucky on the trip. I was determined to insist on frosting segregation even though last time I tried in Durham, the manager wouldn’t let me.

I was appalled. This is America, for heaven’s sake. Isn’t there some constitutional right to have your biscuit frosting put in a separate container?
But thanks go to the manager in Yanceyville who saw the feisty gleam in my eye and agreed. (Why it had to even go as far as a manager is beyond me.)

Of course, I had to fight off the curbside checker guy who wanted to confiscate my biscuits and the airport security man who wanted them at the security checkpoint. There was a moment’s hesitation on my part to deny him anything with so many guns around, but I was politely uncooperative.

Evidently, I’m not the only person who takes biscuits westward, according to the aforementioned curbside checker guy.

All went well as Bojangles and I flew, except for when I initially sat down on top of the airlines blanket that was in a plastic bag on my seat. It popped, and I said, “Oh, no” rather loudly, somehow thinking I had sat on my biscuits. It got a laugh from the man across the aisle.

Then the Atlanta airport was a little stressful because my plane in Raleigh was late leaving, so I landed in Atlanta at 1:37 and had to catch a plane leaving four concourses away at 1:50.

Check the security videos. Yes, there was only one person running through the airport with a Bojangles bag knocking against her legs.
“Coming through, coming through. BoBerries. Make room for the BoBerries.”

The most stressful biscuit-toting flight, however, was last year when five kids lived out in Utah, and I was coerced into bringing three dozen biscuits.

There were SO MANY of them that I had to go to Dick’s Sporting Goods and get an insulated bright blue tote to put them in.

Of course, this was the only flight I’ve ever gotten on and off twice. Shove biscuits into seat space in front of you, wrench them out, repeat when plane develops engine trouble. Then carry them while you stand in line to reschedule flight, retrieve your luggage and get on shuttle to hotel.

Stay in hotel with biscuits. Show up next morning with two or three less biscuits, and repeat the whole shoving and wrenching process.

Finally, one of the passengers couldn’t contain himself and came up to me in the boarding line as I stood there with my huge blue insulated tote.
“I just have to ask,” he said. “What in the world is in your bag?”

“Biscuits,” I said. “A whole lot of biscuits. My kids in Utah need biscuits.”

All around me people nodded in understanding and support. I then felt good about my biscuits and knew deep in my heart that whatever overhead bin space I would need, there would be people willing to sacrifice.

It became a shining moment in my life as a mother and, fortunately for my children, a motivation to keep on bringing those BoBerries.