The most thrilling aspect to me of a nonflying book tour, though, was NO AIRPORT SECURITY. In just a few short years of existence, TSA has managed to do the impossible—they have surpassed the U.S. Postal Service in the employment of Persons Most Likely to Drive Other Persons Completely Insane.
I have, of course, the utmost respect and appreciation for the job at hand for both the post office and the transportation security folks—but you have to admit there are a disturbingly large number of dumbo apples in both barrels.
On Queen Ellyn’s most recent trek to Jackson from the hinterlands of Oregon for the execution of her yearly Parade duties, she carelessly, stupidly, made a last-minute insertion into her carry-on bag of one of the most deadly threats known to our airways. How she could do such a thing and hope to get away with it is beyond me—I mean, it’s not like the rules for airline safety are new or anything—we all know them, and if we don’t, it doesn’t matter because there are countless signs in the security areas of all airports outlining them, and, of course, there is the TSA designated hollerer at every station to remind us.
Let us not forget for an instant the tremendous dangers these rules are designed to protect us all from and let us not for an instant let down our guards or become lax in the enforcement of these rules, lest unspeakable disaster strike needlessly.
And yet. She brazenly attempted to slide this potential weapon of mass destruction undetected through security and BOARD AN AIRCRAFT with it. The dozens of other unsuspecting and totally innocent passengers who were compliant with all the rules had no idea that this small woman who appeared to be such a nice person was actually a sneak of the lowest, most cowardly form.
She looked like all of them—regular ole Amur-kin—no suspicious head gear or non-Anglo ethnicity—it just goes to show you—profiling is wrong. Imagine my surprise when I heard this story—this is a woman I have loved and welcomed not only into my home but aboard my very FLOAT! And yet. Here she was—attempting to subvert our NATIONAL SECURITY by concealing in her carry-on bag a fully loaded container of yogurt.
Luckily for all the other passengers with what could have been the grave misfortune of traveling on that particular day, through that particular airport—TSA was On the Job. The potential death cup was detected on the first pass through the X-ray machine and there was a great hue and cry throughout the area. “WHOSE BAG IS THIS? WHOSE BAG IS THIS?” Those in possession of firearms had their hands hovering inches above their weapons—ready to draw down on the culprit should he or she make a threatening move of any kind.
Ellyn, being slightly hard of hearing in crowded places, was not immediately aware that the jig was up on her little caper and she joined all the other passengers in looking around dazed and confused at what had set off the ire of the entire TSA staff, straining to catch sight of the villain and discern what crime against society had just been thwarted by the thankfully alert X-ray observer person.
“WHOSE BAG IS THIS WITH THE YOGURT IN IT? THERE IS A BAG HERE CONTAINING YOGURT—WHOSE BAG IS THIS? WHO DOES THIS YOGURT BELONG TO?”
Just as Ellyn realized it was her bag and her yogurt that was causing all the commotion in the bullpen, the name on the bag was deciphered by the code breaker on duty and the hunt narrowed. “PASSENGER ELLYN WEEKS! PASSENGER ELLYN WEEKS! WE HAVE YOUR BAG—CONTAINING YOGURT—IN THE SECURITY CHECK POINT—STEP OUT OF LINE IMMEDIATELY AND IDENTIFY YOURSELF TO THE OFFICERS! PASSENGER! ELLYN! WEEKS! COME FORWARD IMMEDIATELY—THERE IS YOGURT IN YOUR BAG!”
“Deer in the headlights” is the phrase that comes to mind as I imagine the shock and fear that must have registered on her face as she realized she had, in fact, been caught—her demonic deed uncovered and announced to the entire Sea-Tac Airport. She’s an intelligent woman—to this day, I just can’t imagine how she thought she would get away with it. The container CLEARLY says on all sides of the label, “EIGHT ounces.” (And it does not matter if you eat most of it so it contains only the permitted THREE—if it says eight on the outside, it’s eight on the inside, according to The Holy Book of Regulations. There MUST be strict enforcement of the three-ounce rule, because you just KNOW that SOMEbody will try to get by with five or six sooner or later, although not many would be as brazen as Ellyn—going for a full EIGHT-count.)
You think you know somebody and the next thing you know, this person you’ve called “friend” and trusted completely in every way just destroys your faith in most of humanity like this—just because SHE thought SHE might get “hungry” waiting for her plane and thought she might “save a few bucks” by bringing HER OWN yogurt with her—EIGHT full ounces of it, too—HIDDEN in her carry-on bag—and that would give HER the right to just thumb her little Anglo-Saxon button nose at the very fiber and foundation of our great nation—that being, of course, the rabid enforcement of inane regulations.
And I say that because when Ellyn finally did make good on her arrival at the Hilton Hotel in Jackson and she tiredly set about unpacking all her luggage—including the offending carry-on bag—imagine her surprise when she reached in to pull a mysterious object out of the bottom of the bag and what did she see in her hand when she gave it a final yank? A PAIR OF SHEARS WITH EIGHT-INCH BLADES.
She’d long forgotten what they were ever in there for—she just packed on top of them, unawares. Thank God they got so wound up over that YOGURT—she might have ended up on the airline’s blacklist if they’da found them big-ass scissors.
Is That a Vibrator in Your Bag or Are You Just Glad to See Me?
Not only does one need to exercise extreme particularity when packing one’s carry-on satchels, the current state of world affairs has necessitated or at least facilitated such unprecedented forays into our Private Matters that it also behooves one to reconsider one’s choices in one of the Most Private of Our Matters, that being the selection of sex toys, specifically the items one wishes to carry with one, within one’s checked baggage, when one is traveling on public conveyances.
Great care and caution should be employed in this selection process on account of everybody in the TSA is gonna be looking at it and fooling with it. So THINK about what all you put in that suitcase you check through to your destination. If one is traveling to a place that has access to normal electrical outlets, then might I suggest you choose a Plug-In Guy as opposed to a Battery-Operated Boyfriend?
For one thing, it’s not going to LOOK at all “lifelike” and therefore it will be a much lesser source of entertainment for the bored inspectors—this works in your favor. And it also, obviously, must actually be plugged into a wall socket in order to, well, do what it do and so no bored inspector can decide to randomly flip its switch and say, just for grins, leave it running in your suitcase, which will not only put you at risk of arriving at your destination with dead batteries—woe is you—but also offers you the stellar opportunity to be summoned over the PA system throughout the EN-tire airport and commanded to return to the baggage security scan to account for the unexplained buzzing in your luggage.
Activating battery-operated vibrators in suitcases is apparently one of the top five favorite things for TSA agents to do, it seems—even more than loosening all the caps of the liquids in your makeup bag so everything in your suitcase gets perfumed and/or moisturized—after all, they don’t get to BE THERE to SEE when you discover THAT little trick. So with the live vibrator in the bag, you can be assured of an enthusiastic crowd gathering to witness your luggage inspection.
I’m Just a Businesswoman, Why Do You Ask?
I used to like to think I was providing some welcome diversion and entertainment for our overworked TSA personnel as they dutifully inspected my carry-on bag. Passing through thirty or forty different airports in as many days will cure one of any desire to have any sort of verbal exchange with them, however, and that is precisely the situation in which I currently find myself: the novelty, as they say, has worn plumb off.
For one thing, I am always flying in and out on different airlines—meaning I will have two
months’ worth of ONE-WAY tickets all over the country, so I am immediately Suspect in each of the respective airports. I am “randomly selected” for a more intensive examination every single time—coincidence? Likely. Fortunately, as yet, I have not been subjected to a full-body/cavity search, but I feel it’s only a matter of time.
Close inspection of my carry-on bag is mandatory at every checkpoint because the X-ray immediately spots and alerts TSA to the big-ass crown in my bag. I have no idea what it looks like on their equipment but I’m sure it looks lethal—it’s the size of the sun and extremely spiky. So, we go to the designated search area and they ask permission to open my bag and I give it—like, what choice do I have?—and they open it and they see, in person, the big-ass crown, and naturally, their simple basic human curiosity is piqued—but add to that the fact that they are gub’mint-related entities—well, they have Questions.
It used to be entertaining to try to explain myself to them, but as I said—I’m over that. So now when they drag out the bigass crown and ask me what it’s for, I just look bland and state the facts—“I’m The Sweet Potato Queen,” like THAT explains ANYTHING. I don’t offer anything further—answer only the questions asked. They look expectant for a moment, but when nothing else is forthcoming, they’re so surprised, they can’t think of any other pertinent queries and they move on, somewhat uncomfortably, to the remaining contents of my suspicious baggage. Whereupon they discover the presence of an enormous cache of bumper stickers reading, never wear panties to a party, which, you’ve got to admit, WOULD beg the question, no matter who you are. I stand erect, gazing fixedly at some point on the horizon, silent but inwardly chortling, knowing as I do, what they are going to discover NEXT.
They open the long thin cardboard box and they see the contents within: five thousand hot pink business-sized cards that say, “LICK YOU ALL OVER—10 cents—Ask about our other Specialties.” And again, out of my own personal over-it-ness and, of course, in deference to all the other hapless passengers awaiting their own respective turns at the inspection table, I offer nothing in the way of explanation. I do freely admit to a gleeful sense of satisfaction at the thought of leaving discombobulated TSA personnel in my wake across the USA.
IS Dat You?
Many long years ago, when my daddy was still alive and traveling around on bidness, he and a male business associate got stuck in a small town due to an untimely automobile malfunction. It was particularly untimely because it occurred just after quitting time at the only mechanic’s garage on a rainy afternoon on the day before some big local to-do.
This meant a couple of things to our travelers—namely, that the car wasn’t going anywhere until at least midafternoon the following day, assuming the lone mechanic showed up for work and was in the mood to even attempt to fix their car and was also in possession of whatever part might be needed to do so.
It also meant that the one hotel in town was filled to something very like capacity—which never happened except once a year, for the big local to-do, whatever it was, that was scheduled for the very next day—so that when Daddy and his associate finally arrived, soaking wet from walking many, many blocks in the rain from the closed mechanic’s shop, Daddy was greatly disheartened to learn that there might also be a problem concerning any overnight accommodations for them.
Daddy asked the desk clerk/owner of the hotel for two rooms and was told that there was only one room left in the whole establishment but it did have two beds in it and Daddy said fine, he’d take it, and thus began the check-in process.
The first snag was Daddy wanted to write a check to pay for the room and his driver’s license was in the glove box of the broken-down car, many, many rain-soaked blocks away. When the clerk asked for identification and was told that the license was in the car—many, many rain-soaked blocks away—there was reluctance on his part to accept the out-of-town check. He reiterated that he needed some proof of identity. As it happened, there was a large mirror hanging on the wall behind the desk, and Daddy leaned to one side so that he could look around the desk clerk and see his own reflection in it. He studied it for a long moment and then gestured for the desk clerk to turn around and look, and he asked the clerk, “Is that a mirror?” The clerk, of course, said yes, it IS—his tone indicating a level of irritated incredulity that there could be any question about what it was—it was OBVIOUSLY a mirror. Daddy said, “I thought so. Let me get a good look here,” and he gazed thoughtfully for another long moment, saying, “Hmmmm, well, then, YEP, that’s ME, all right.”
Okay, so the ID problem was solved, but a particularly thorny issue still remained: there was only one room—and the desk clerk was just learning that there were two MEN wanting to book it. Even though there WERE admittedly two beds in that room—the owner of this small-town establishment was not prepared, in 1962, to be renting out one of HIS rooms for two MEN to share, regardless of any broken-down-car-inthe-pouring-ass-rain-closed-mechanic’s-garage-type circumstances. Looked like a Queer Deal to him and he wudd’n taken NO-O-O-O chances of any of THAT happening at HIS ho-tel, no-sirree-bobtail-cat. (Now, there’s a Southernism I’ve never understood, although I’ve lived here my EN-tire life. I get the no-sirree part—but what does the bobtail cat signify? Anybody out there know? Anybody?)
Anyway, the bidness associate had been wandering around, checking out the cool old hotel lobby, and was unaware of the checking-in problems and that he might soon be relegated to sleeping in the broken-down car many, many rain-soaked blocks away. He totally missed the whole ID-by-mirror episode and was just approaching from some distance when the Homo-sexshull Problem was being hinted at.
The clerk had asked, as they used to do, who would be sharing the room, and Daddy had indicated his wandering business associate and the clerk had just begun protesting the disturbing impropriety of it all. So all the business associate heard as he walked up was Daddy inexplicably describing HIM as “Oh, no, sir, it’s not what you think—that’s just my idiot brother-in-law. I’m taking him back to my wife’s parents, somebody has to watch him all the time or he gets nekkid and shits in the street—but I’ll give him his medicine and he’ll sleep all night, don’t you worry.”
Luckily, the business associate had the presence of mind to infer from hearing that colorful if confusing description of his veryownself that there must be some kind of very good reason for it and so he kept his mouth shut—which did require retrieving his lower jaw from the floor, to which it had no doubt dropped as he heard himself so described. And so he was able to sleep in a semicomfy hotel bed that night, as opposed to a not-so-sumptuous car seat, and although everyone talked very slowly and with a little more than necessary volume to him—as if he were not only mentally deficient but also slightly hard of hearing—they were all pretty nice. Daddy was regarded as quite the saintly figure for the good care taken of his “handicapped brother-in-law,” so I suppose it comes under the all’s-well-that-ends-well clause.
Well, today, of course, nobody cares with whom you share your room, but even an attempt at self-identification by way of a MIRROR would probably get you arrested in some areas—airports, for example. I can’t believe we have to have a PASSPORT even to go to Canada and Mexico now. Bummer.
Back in our salad days—why do they call ’em that? We never ate salads then and we certainly wouldn’t consider salad a positive, unless it was maybe ’tater salad made with tons of mayo and crispy bacon—that would be swell, so okay, in that context, we can accept “salad days” as a good thing—SO, back in ours—me and my sister, Judy, would run down to Cozumel at the drop of a hat or anything else—often we would go when nothing at all had been dropped—we just looooved it there and it was so easy and cheap, we could hardly afford to stay HOME.
We had found ourselves in possession of (or is it possessed by?) one of those oft-touted wild hairs and were upping to take off and head for the island without a whole lot of advance preparation. I had thrown some stuff in a duffel bag and driven to New Orleans so that w
e could fly outta there early the next morning.
Somehow, in the discussion of what all we were collectively packing or leaving, it became known to us that I had run off to N.O. without bringing any form of acceptable border-crossing identification. At that time, you could use a passport, of course, or you could use your voter registration card (even though there was no such thing as voter ID then) or you could use what was called an “affidavit of citizenship,” which was a notarized piece of paper saying that you were who you were and you lived at such-and-such a place in the United States and that you were, in fact, a citizen of same. No photo, just a notary’s signature. Pretty solid proof of, well, nothing.
I didn’t own a passport, and since my voter’s registration card was not in my wallet where I thought it was, there was no telling where it actually was, and besides, I really was NOT in the mood to drive the three hours BACK to Jackson, spend however many hours it would take to try to locate the card, and then drive the three more hours back to New Orleans in order to be at the airport for our early flight to Cozumel.
And so, at around nine pm, after a few cocktails, we settled on crafting for me an affidavit of citizenship. It was amazingly easy. We simply went down to Judy’s office and typed up the requisite wordage, found her boss’s notary seal, applied it to the paper in the proper place, made sure we had the two necessary “witness signatures”—which, I’m not sure, I think we may have signed ourownselves and then, after all this chicanery, for some unknowable reason, Judy weaseled at this juncture and could not bring herself to add the actual forgery of her boss’s signature on the seal to our list of crimes, and so around midnight, as I recall, we hunted him down at a bar and got him to sign it, without reading it, of course. And that piece of worthless paper was all I needed to guarantee my exit from and reentry into this country that I do so love.
American Thighs Page 16