A sense of security

Train stations, airports and bus stations have one thing in common. They move people from point A to point B with strict attention to homeland security regulations. Yesterday I left for a combination business/pleasure trip to San Francisco.

I removed the laptop from its case, my shoes from my feet, my jacket from off my back, my purse from my arm, the liquid in less-than-three-ounce containers zipped into a plastic baggie, and the earrings from my ears. The lady standing in front of me in the airport security line looked like she got bumped from a flight because of a galactic asteroid collision. I only know this because she had a large piece of the asteroid stuck to her chest.

The guy next to me was wearing pants made from, it looked like, Glad Wrap bags. They rustled when he moved. I looked up. It was my husband. I hate those noisy sweat pants. He’s into comfort. I guess he never heard Billy Crystal’s over-the-top impersonation of Fernando Lamas saying, “It’s better to look good than to feel good.”

I placed all my paraphernalia in the little plastic trays and walked towards the metal detector tunnel. The TSA Gestapo agent holding the wand motioned me back to the gray containers and told me to push them through the x-ray machine. “I don’t work here,” the voices inside my head were thinking. “You push them through.” But I said nothing. I was trying really hard not to act suspicious.

The lady with the rock on her chest stepped through the metal detector. She passed. I walked through as naked as I’d ever been in public, and it went off.

My bag didn’t pass either. They pulled me aside.  I got scared. They instructed me not to touch anything while they rifled (punny) through my bag. I was worried they’d find the half eaten donut. My husband thinks I’m on a diet.

They pulled out a Yoplait yogurt and a pair of fingernail clippers. They told me I can’t take either item on board. Did they think I was going to clip my way through the armored door to the cockpit and cover the pilot with yogurt – non-fat at that?

I hated losing the little clippers. But the sense of security I traded for was worth it.

P.S. And, yes, due to a flight of clipperless passengers I’m sure, I arrived safely in San Francisco with very little time to drive to a retirement dinner. Had I known I would be so late, I could have changed clothes in the security line when I was nearly naked, instead of in the car as I drove to the party.