Friday, July 25, 2003
Feeling Secure
We get to the small regional airport and we want to check one bag through to San Francisco. We’ve already gotten boarding passes on line so I’m expecting minimal additional delays. There’s no line at the counter and all goes swiftly; I get a tag for the bag and then an unexpected instruction: to haul my own suitcase to another counter for a security screening. Obediently, I comply.
There’s one couple ahead me us with the screener. They’re our age, white, nicely dressed, with two small expensive-looking suitcases to check. I watch as the screener carefully swabs the outside of one bag and analyzes the swab in an electronic device; then as he opens the front pocket of the luggage, swabs inside it, pulls out the boots it contains, swabs them, and puts them back. (Every swab gets analyzed in the device.) Then he pulls out all the plastic bags of shoes packed inside the suitcase, swabs each shoe. He rifles throughall the contents of the suitcase, top to bottom - from the left side, the right side, the front, the back, and down through the middle. Then he starts in on bag 2 - the same procedure, swabbing everything everywhere. It takes some time.
In hopes of accellerating my passage through this gauntlet of vigilence, I zip open my suitcase and the outside pockets, and untie the plastic bags of shoes. When it’s my turn I hoist the suitcase to the inspection table and proudly announce what I’ve done. “Oh, sir, we can’t search your bag like that. Please restore it to its originally sealed condition.” My obedience extends even to this request. Before his watchful eyes I tie the bags, zip the case closed, and re-present everything.
With funereal solemnity he pulls a fresh swab, daubs the handles and zipper, checks the swab. “There you go, sir. Have a safe flight.” He hasn’t even opened the bag.
During an hour and a half in the Wilkes-Barre terminal waiting for the weather in our connecting location to clear up, I ruminated on this inconsistency of inspections. Why did I skate through, with my scruffy appearance, dangerous ideas and antisocial attitude, when the guy with the close shave who wasn’t sweating like Willard Scott doing Bikram yoga got the third degree? Luck of the draw? Secret tattoo? Personal whim or animosity? Or maybe something more sinister?
Assuming mere incompetence was another possible reason, I was inspired to develop the following security guidelines to assist the TSA in the evenhanded and thorough execution of their duties and of any terrorists they encounter:
* All passengers should strip to their socks before going through metal detectors, or better yet, before entering the airport.
* Before going through the metal detector, remove all artificial limbs and joints.
* Jettison contents of all bags. They can buy more stuff once they land.
* Divide everybody up by gender and have them search each other.
* Anyone with reading material or eyeglasses is to be considered potentially intelligent and therefore presumptively dangerous. Destroy all such accoutrements and render said individuals illiterate. A piece of sharpened rebar will be provided to you for this purpose.
* Anyone exhibiting suspicious behaviors or hairstyles should be subjected to the “tickle machine” until they confess to something.
* Allow no passengers or luggage onto any aircraft.
Enjoy your flight.
