And Then…There’s the TSA

If you travel enough in Terror Alert America, it’s inevitable that you’re going to eventually run afoul of the TSA.  For those of you who haven’t, let me make it abundantly clear that those initials should be short for Trifling Security Administration.

Yesterday, as I tried to take my carry-on bag through security at Kansas City International Airport, I got the dreaded, “Is this your bag, sir?” question from one of the valiant TSA troopers.  I had literally no idea what could have possibly set off their alarm bells.  It wasn’t my computer bag, from which I had already removed my laptop and which contained nothing else on the prohibited list.  I had already removed my precious baggy of shaving cream, toothpaste, etc., so that wasn’t it either. 

So, having passed through the metal detector unscathed myself, I gathered up my jacket, shoes, laptop, and computer bag and waited while the TSA trooper opened my bag in front of everyone who was traveling to Milwaukee/Philadelphia.  Along with my boxers and other clothes, among the items that were perfectly acceptable to carry onto an airplane were a leather belt with a metal tip (strangling/whipping possibilities), dress shoes with hard rubber soles (clubbing), and the bag itself, which is the kind that rolls and has the extendable handle, a.k.a. telescoping metal rods that were never examined for their potential to be removed from the bag and used as clubs, swords, or other weapons.  My computer bag, which didn’t concern them in the slightest, contained two different power chords (garrotes), a variety of pens (stabbing), a power source in the form of my laptop’s battery (explosive detonator), and the computer itself, which is one of the those godforsaken heavy Dell jobs that could easily be used to brain someone if that was my desire.

All of that stuff was fine with the TSA.  The trooper, continuing his search, finally worked his way into my toilet kit.  After picking through my toothbrush, comb, chapstick and Advil, he pulled out my Gillette Fusion razor blades.  These are the kind that are in cartridges.  The kind that are specifically listed on the TSA’s website as being perfectly acceptable.

“I bet this is what she saw,” the trooper said.

“Razor blades,” I said.  “Seriously?”

“Well, maybe they looked different on the x-ray,” he said, not looking up at me.  I think he realized how silly that excuse was. 

“It also looks like you’ve got a little pocket knife in there.”  He then pulled out the little pocket knife in question, which looks exactly like this:

If you can’t tell, that “weapon” consists of a tiny pair of scissors, a tiny nail file, a tiny tweezer, and a tiny one-inch knife blade.  Certainly, it wasn’t the scissors causing the problem, because this kind would have been perfectly acceptable:

…and mine didn’t come anywhere close to that.  It also wasn’t the nail file, which would have been acceptable in much larger size.  Same goes for the tweezer, which  is acceptable even in regulation size.

No, the problem here, presuming it wasn’t the razor blades, was the tiny, one-inch knife blade.  The trooper trotted back over to the lady running the x-ray, and she indicated that it was, in fact, the pocket knife that was the offending object.  She re-ran the rest of my bag through the x-ray and deemed it to be clean, after which the trooper came back over and told me my pocket knife wasn’t allowed as he put the rest of my toilet kit back in my bag and handed it back to me.

“Really?  I took that same pocket knife through security at this airport and Atlanta’s just last week.”

“On your carry-on?”

“Yup.”

“Well,” he stuttered, clearly flustered, “you shouldn’t have been able to do that.  Is anyone with you that could go out and give this to?”

“Nope,” I said, and walked away.

So here I sit, in my hotel room in Philadelphia, short one tiny pocket knife.  Had I wanted to, I could have strolled onto the airplane with any number of sharpened 7-inch screwdrivers.  I could have carried metal knitting needles onto the plane.  I would have been allowed to carry a common cigarette lighter and alcohol (which is flammable, by the way) onto the plane as well.  A cane to beat the stewardess over the head?  No problem.  A corkscrew to jab in her eye?  Sure, why not?

But that one-inch pocket knife blade?  Banned.  I’m probably on a government watch list now, branded permanently as a suspected terrorist for attempting to carry a banned object onto a plane.  (This blog entry probably isn’t going to help that situation either, now that I think about it.)  Meanwhile, any grandmother with a cane and her knitting is legally packing more genuine weapons as she flies to see the grandkids in Kalamazoo than I supposedly attempted to sneak into Philadelphia.

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.