I always feel discombobulated when I fly.  It has never mattered how often I travel by air, formerly for business and now for pleasure — I land feeling slightly rearranged.    I am not afraid of flying;  but the process of going up and down so fast joggles up all my cells and I swear leaves some molecules in a different place.

I knew this weekend’s flight from Milwaukee would be no exception.  I was preparing to zoom through the air, and to try to hold all my cells together as I read my book along the way.  I had just passed the security checkpoint when I saw what I have waited for all my life:

The Recombobulation Station.

I could not make this up.

There it was, an area with chairs and a table and a BIG sign announcing this was the place to get myself recombobulated.  Where presumably people can reassemble themselves: put the shoes back on, and the belt, watch, jewelry, giant ring of important keys, the metal plate in their head and reinsert the pacemaker if needed.

I have craved recombobulation for a long time.  However, I was never really, really, really sure that discombobulated itself was even a real word, and there was its antithesis, right at the airport of all places, my epicenter of discombobulatedness.

I should have sat at the recombobulation station for a long time, as it surely would have done me good.  Especially right before I was to be beamed up on the StarShip Midwest Express by Scotty.  But it was time to hurry, hurry, hurry to the gate and get my roots tucked in for the flight home.

More on that later…