Skip to main content

The Traveler

Once, in a moment of realization, a security guard at an airport, recognizing that I was old and tottering, told me that I did not have to remove my shoes as I went through the checkpoint.  Not this time.  You know the drill:  take off your coat, your shoes, your belt, your sense of decency, and empty your pockets into several plastic pans:  wallet, comb, keys, coins, handkerchief--"Do people still carry those, Sir?"--fingernail clipper, little note papers, a pen, belt, phone and phone case, and ear wax.  Oops!  Another dime!

I did that.  "Raise your arms and pretend you are Jesus on the cross!"  Sure.  Easy.  "Palms up, Sir!"  "No, turn around and face your plastic bins so you can see that no one is robbing you!"

O.K.  I am being cooperative and uncomplaining.

I listened to the pre-game instructions:  gloves, back of the hands up my crotch, finger around my pants top, patting my man-boobs, nothing personal, you know:  it is all public, after all.

"What are those?"  "Those?"  Those are my hip bones.  "Are you . . . are you wearing underwear?"

Yes, sir.  I am wearing underwear.  Boxer shorts, should you care to know.  He called over his superviser.  His superviser patted my hip bones.  "Muscle-bound," he said.  I nearly laughed out loud, but the sign on the wall said that the Security Personnel took everything very seriously, so that I should not laugh.

"My carry-on," they said, "was radio-active, or odorous, or indicating a dread disease or agricultural fertilizer or dog in heat," so they had to take it apart again, whilst wiping it down for isotopes and left-handed quarks and elephant breath.

Nothing.

"Are you sure you are wearing underwear?"  I was sure, although his tone of voice caused me to pat my . . . to . . . .  I was sure.

They pointed to a different mat with two generic footprints, and I stood there.  A Super-Superviser explained that he was going to. . . . .  well, he didn't say it, but I knew that it had something to do with my underwear and . . .  and such.

"Down, boy!", I kept saying to myself.  "This ain't personal!"

I am a modest man, and I almost always wear clothes at the grocery store, but I was sorely tempted to strip down there, at the end of the security line, next to the Travelers Snack and Stare Shop, just to demonstrate to the Free World that what I had to hide was hardly worth hiding.

Having ascertained that I had legitimate reasons for wearing underwear, and that my hip bones were where they ought to be--one on each side--they thanked me kindly and told me I could use the gray plastic chair to put my shoes on, and things where they ought to be.

Sleep well, tonight!  We are secure.  I know that madmen exist.  I know that people really do try to blow up planes, and that we have to try to make things safe, if we can.

I do wonder what wearing underwear has to do with it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more