What Were We Thinking?

If anyone has ever mailed food or anything breakable and found it completely and utterly annihilated on the other side, read on! For I can relate.

Because we could only take one bag with us on the plane to Palermo from Bologna (yes it's a city and not a food) we were forced by ASSE to mail the other that we had brought. After waiting about a week, my bag finally came. I was rather eager to open it, not only because it had more clothes that I needed, but more because we had packed a couple jars of blackberry jam in there for my family. Not only had we packed blackberry jam but we had also packed some shampoo. Just in case my host family had privacy issues I guess.
I opened the bag hoping to find the blackberries from heaven. I found blackberries, I found blackberries all over my clothes. Not only was there blackberries on absolutely everything, but it was coated with a thin layer of the shampoo. I opened the bag, reached my hand in to begin unpacking and a slightly cold substance touched my fingers, the nerves beneath my skin immediately detected this and sent a message up through my arm, past my shoulder, to my neck, into my spinal cord, and arrived at my brain in an instant. At this point of the arrival my brain became stunned, for the first time in my life, my body was completely unable to function. For about a minute or two (or what seemed like it) I stood there staring at the cold slimy substance that had just transfered itself from my clothes onto my hands. And then it happened, I blinked once or twice, my mouth opened and my tongue became dry, I swallowed and the next feelings were strange. At first it was shock, then fear, from fear it went to fury, from fury to curiosity, and back to fear. I called out and my voice cracked "Lilli...", there was no answer. I called again, and she came in, "Abbiamo un problema".
From that point on I had to unload my suitcase and place every contaminated article of anything on newspaper that covered more of the room than the actual floor. Once my suitcase was completely unloaded onto the floor, we took it into the bathroom to hose it down. However they did not have a shower head that was made for efficiency, but more for looks. So we spent about an hour hosing a mix of shampoo and blackberries.
We then left the suitcase to dry in the bathtub while we tended to the massive amounts of jam exposed clothes. Because Lilli is a magicianette, we managed to get all of the stains out of my clothes using bleach. And I now will refer to the title of this post, when we were in America, what in God's name were we thinking when we packed six glass jars of jam into a suitcase that would be traveling in control of the airport staff.

Lesson(s) learned:

1. Never ever put any type of breakable glass filled with staining fluid into a suitcase.
2. Bleach will solve even the greatest of problems.

Dustin