Get your hands off my...

Evidently San Francisco is well-prepared for an unnatural disaster.

I came to the office early this morning, after dropping my parents off at the airport. The streets were blocked off and officers everywhere: police, army, traffic cops, the works. Serious men and women in uniform, hiding behind small trees. I asked a guy with flares what was going on. "Special event," he said.

Ground zero for all the hubbub? You guessed it. My office building. There was a Hazardous Material Removal truck, firetrucks, paddy wagons, little tents over the manholes in the streets. There were flashing lights and emergency cordons and a gurney with no one on it. "There were bomb-sniffing dogs," the security guy said. "They started around 3am."

I asked one more time if it were really just a drill. 'Cause, hell, I can work from home.

My parents had a great time. We saw the SF Symphony perform Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky last night. We went to Napa and tasted wine. We spent a night at Indian Springs in Calistoga, where my mom and I soaked in a giant mineral pool and got massages. My dad read the paper in a chair on the lawn. He does not own: shorts, sandals, a shirt without buttons. He has sneakers 'cause I gave them to him. He didn't bring them.

Unfortunately, I poisoned my mother. I didn't mean to. Wednesday night we went to Teatro Zinzanni, a dinner theater that was very entertaining. Thursday afternoon, she didn't feel good, and it stayed with her for most of the visit. She thinks it was a sandwich she had on the plane. I fear it was my cookies, or a restaurant of my choice. Either way, it was a serious bummer.

Saturday was the best day. It started with me finding an apple under the front tire of my car. Of course, I kicked it. It rolled down the hill, skipping and hopping like the Gingerbread Man. Then, in a perfect arc, it rounded the corner and went out of sight. I was tempted to follow, to see where it was going.

It was a fine, sunny, foggy last day. I took my parents on a driving tour of San Francisco: The Presidio, Legion of Honor, Sutro Baths, Ocean Beach, GG Park, Twin Peaks, where tendrils of fog zoomed around like, um, clouds in a hurricane. My brother M, by the way, got a two-page spread in a major national news magazine. Go M! I bought two copies with my dad. It's about time one of us made the big time.

On my last visit to Rochester, NY, in August, I called my mom from the gate to tell her about The Puffer. In Rochester International Airport (Ha!) you walk into a booth that blasts you with air, which they then check for explosive materials to make sure you are not a walking bomb. I was not a walking bomb, so I was allowed to continue. I guess if you are, the booth just stays shut and some guys in a forklift come carry it away, in case you detonate yourself.

But I digress.

Earlier this week, I talked to my sister D. She'd just dropped my parents at the airport to come here. "It's weird," she tells me. "They're really excited about going through this security machine at the airport. I guess it puffs air at you or something."

This morning at 6am, the security women gave my mom a full rub-down. They patted her fanny (the american version), hips, waist, legs. They checked the underwires of her bra. Keep in mind here, my mother is a silver-haired 74-year-old retired Methodist pastor. And she's had surgery recently: two new knees and a pinned ankle.

"Everything beeped," my mom said when she called from the gate. "My bra beeped, the straps beeped, the underwire beeped. My zipper beeped. My knee beeped, both knees beeped. My ankle beeped. My watch beeped. I was one big beeping mess." I love my mom.

There she stood, in her blue polo shirt and slacks, while they wanded her. She had her head set a little to one side -- an early warning sign that she's just about had it. If things continued, she would shake her head, and then put her hands in the air in exasperation, as if she were clutching a gigantic submarine sandwich.

I watched. Her hands did not go up. But I was ready, boy. Like Mel Gibson in that terrible The Patriot movie, which I never saw, I would burst through the narrow ribbon of nylon and leap onto the x-ray conveyor belt. And point and say, "Get your hands off my mother." This must be what it's like to have kids. As my mom would, and did, say, I need to get a life.