Blue Collar Muse

I’m flying tomorrow morning. That means I won’t actually get dressed until after I get through security. It’s not bad enough that I have to pack my carry-on bags at home, unpack them at the airport and then re-pack them while making sure strangers don’t make off with my stuff, now spread out on a table. I’m not even completely ready for my day.

I’ve taken to not fully dressing before flying. My belt, watch, glasses, cell phone - anything and everything that we attach to ourselves daily for our routine, I leave off. I put it in my carry-on bag and send it through the machine first. Then I finish dressing for the day on the other side of security. It’s not too bad except when I get those phone calls while driving to the airport. If you think it’s bad that I talk and drive at the same time, imagine me unpacking my garment bag or laptop case to enable me to talk and drive at the same time.

Once I get to security, for me, it’s always worse. I watch with envy as women with earrings and other jewelry breeze through the metal detector. I wear a silver bracelet I bought on my honeymoon 20+ years ago. It doesn’t come off but it does set off airport metal detectors. Not just now and then. Every. Last. Time. Thus I have to budget even more time for the wanding and pat down search before security releases me to finish dressing.

But it could be a whole lot worse. My little inconveniences don’t begin to compare with the experiences of some poor, unfortunate souls. I thought the idea of BDOs and a couple of other TSA tricks I recently posted about were bad. I might be rethinking that conclusion in light of these videos.

Everyone I know is all about safety. We watch our kids, buckle our seatbelts, don’t drink and drive and all the other stuff, too. At what point in time, however, do we as a nation decide enough is enough? Common sense and common courtesy don’t seem to be charge much anymore. Increasingly it seems as if common thugs are. As one video notes, there have been hundreds of millions of air travelers since 9/11 and only 110,000 complaints so perhaps it’s not the big deal it seems. But folks like Mandi Hamlin, Robert Perry, Michael Angone and Robin Kassner might beg to differ.

Blue Collar Muse

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