Albuquerque’s
international airport, dubbed The Sunport, ranks as one of the
smaller and friendlier airports around. That’s important for
Westerners like me.
Since traveling became an uncertain
business, being met by “our” people behind the counter,
in shops and at the gate, goes a long way to ease nervousness for
infrequent flyers. This is particularly true when traveling at
holiday time. We count on knowing that the person driving the
shuttle, inspecting bags or sweeping floors could be our neighbor,
or maybe even related by marriage.
That we might meet our
neighbor is probably one reason some of us leave certain things at
home. Sure, what we pack is related to the persnickety and always
changing requirements of Homeland Security. But I imagine some of
us just don’t want Mildred from down the street on suitcase
duty.
So you can imagine my embarrassment when I was
caught carrying contraband at Albuquerque’s security
checkpoint, which is what happened on a recent trip to Washington,
D.C. I realized I was in trouble when my carry-on suitcase went
back and forth in the X-ray machine long enough to have a
radioactive half-life approaching 1,000 years. Any doubt a security
issue had arisen vanished when the stone-faced inspector — not my
neighbor Mildred – demanded in a loud, authoritative voice:
“Whose bag is this?” Then pointing at me, she said,
“Step this way. Stand behind the yellow line. Do not touch
the bag. Is there anything in this bag that may harm me?”
I panicked. I had no clue what might be in there to cause alarm. I
stepped forward tentatively, mumbling words the agent interpreted
as license to examine my belongings. She extracted several items,
including an oversized ballpoint pen she had difficulty opening. My
offer to show her how was rewarded by a sharp reminder to “Stay
behind the line! Do not touch the bag or anything coming out of the
bag!” She went back to the pen-puzzle. Finally, persistence
prevailed, proving a ballpoint pen is sometimes just a ballpoint
pen.
She continued searching my luggage. At last, the
culprit was found: my toiletry case. Her gloved hands extracted the
case from the nearly empty suitcase with the precision of a heart
surgeon. The inspector opened it as if she were about to cut into
the exposed organ. From the toiletry case she removed, deftly, the
concealed weapon that had caused the initial alert: two-inch-long
cuticle scissors.
I was given the choice of taking them
back to the car and running the security check point gantlet again
or allowing her to confiscate the offending item. I offered a third
choice in good faith, suggesting she take the scissors home. Wrong
thing to suggest. “We do not take these items home,” she
barked.
Then I was given the privilege of repacking my
bag in the 30 seconds left before my flight ascended to the
heavens. You bet I threw everything back in.
I settled
into my seat, conjuring weird scenarios. I saw myself clambering
over two seatmates to get to the aisle, balancing on the seat arm,
dragging my bag out of the overhead storage bin, pulling out my
cuticle scissors and attacking a seat. I nearly fell into a
blissful, sleep when a startling realization hit me: The security
woman had not seized every potential weapon I carried. I had my
belt. My shoelaces. I struggled to keep my mind off the mayhem I
could still cause. I cinched my seatbelt and prayed that the flight
would be over soon. We arrived without incident caused by any
unbalanced, infuriated or malevolent passenger. I thanked my stars
that a person across the aisle had not used his laptop computer as
a battering ram.
Albuquerque may no longer be the small,
“Ah shucks” cow town I imagine it once was. It has
– some say out of necessity – become part of an America
always playing catch-up to acts of aggression. But keeping people
on edge, encouraging them to be suspicious of each other, and using
public funds to confiscate cuticle scissors seems to me no way to
ensure public safety or promote peace. Couldn’t common sense
serve the cause of democracy much better?
Ross
Putnam is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). A minister for the
United Church of Christ for 25 years, he and his wife now have a
private counseling practice in Santa Fe, New
Mexico.
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