One More Unpleasant Thing

Try as I might, I can’t get worked up about the latest TSA dust up.

I hate flying and have hated it for years now.  I cope with it by turning off my outward senses, going with the flow as it were.  I wend my way through the crowds, entering the maze at the end of which sits a TSA person with their little black light pen and colored ink marker.  While negotiating the maze, I pull out my license and boarding pass, put what’s in my pants and shirt pockets into my jacket pockets and start unzipping the laptop case.

After saying thanks to the TSA person (what can I say, I was raised to be polite, saying thanks is almost an involuntary reaction to any encounter with a person – as a bonus you usually get a return nod, smile or a thanks or all three), I get in the next line to go through one of the magnetometers, and now maybe a full body phone booth thingy.

As we get closer to the tubs, tables and roller, people bunch up, I’ve never quite figured out why.  I take two tubs.  Shoes go on the bottom of one (except when TSA switches things up and tells you to put them on the belt or in their own tub), jacket gets folded and goes in, laptop out and in its tub and I’m ready to go.  At some point in this process, the person behind me will almost always hit my heels with their rolling suitcase and/or shove their first tub into my hand which is on the back end of my last tub. 

Then there’s the person that charges through the magnetometer, not waiting for the high sign from the TSA person.  Go back Sir or Madam.  Now come ahead. Next, step right up.

Then I go through the bumping and shoving routine again while picking up the freshly X-rayed belongings. 

Adding ten seconds in one of the new phone booths to the mess just doesn’t seem like a much greater affront to my dignity.