Security

I’ve been through airport security checkpoints more than a few times this past summer.  Since May I’ve been on 22 flights to six destinations.  It always amazes me the number of Transportation Security Agents I see standing around in every airport.  Perhaps the Homeland Security folks feels this small army of personnel, with seemingly little to do, will intimidate the terrorists enough that they give up their efforts.  Those agents are certainly a stern bunch and they do a good job of intimidating me, but recently I encountered a few that actually had a sense of humor.

Gone are the days when we simply walked through a metal detector at the airport.  They now have scanners that emit Lord knows what through a body to be sure nothing is hidden in the crooks and crannies of a person’s anatomy.  I don’t trust those things so I always “opt-out,” which guarantees me a pat down by a well-trained female security agent.  I look at it as an opportunity to get a quick full body massage before I have to sit for hours on a flight and I didn’t even have to pay extra for it.  The downside is, the agent always spends more time telling me what she’s going to be touching and how she’ll be touching it, than actually spending the time touching those things, but I don’t mind.  It’s a much better option than whatever that machine offers and I’ll opt for human contact anytime.

So one time this very professional older agent started patting me down and when her hands came around the front of me I felt I needed to warn her I wasn’t wearing a bra.  I like to travel in comfort and a bra is about the most uncomfortable item of clothing on the planet.  The minute I gave her that warning, she told me to bend forward.  “I guess you know a thing or two about the ‘over 50’ female anatomy, huh?”  I said.  She actually broke her stern professionalism and chuckled.  She then did a thorough job of checking for explosives amidst certain sagging body parts.  There’s no telling what could have been hidden under there.  

Another agent pulled my son over recently because his backpack showed something suspicious.  We were college shopping on the East Coast last week and while there, we visited an Italian import store where we purchased five pounds of a special flour blended specifically for wood-fired pizza dough.  We have an outdoor pizza oven so we have need for it.  I guess the density of it looked odd on the x-ray machine so Kaleb’s bag endured additional inspection. 

After the agent pulled out the bag of flour, he rubbed a probe all around the outside of it.  I told the guy we had just purchased it at an Italian import store downtown and I sure hope the guys packaging up that bag were running a clean business, as I’d hate to be liable for whatever they had on their hands.  The agent looked at me and said, “Did you hear what you just said?  ‘Italian import business.’  They aren’t exactly known for running clean businesses, you know.”   Then he laughed.  So did I, once the drug and/or explosive test came back clean. Whew.  I needed more than a little massage after that momentary scare.