Me and the TSA, we get along fine. I
have a strange desire to make their days happier—they usually look angry, but I
imagine that’s what serious jobs do to someone’s face—coupled with the desire
to be such an innocuous happy person that they will not search my luggage and deem empty water bottle or roast beef
sandwich dangerous or take away the nail clippers I forgot to take out. I also
want them to not pat me down; physical contact between strangers is icky. Moreover,
by the time I reach airport security checkpoints, I’ve adopted what I call my
travel mojo. In order to avoid Type-A-induced stress I try to be what my former
roommate would call “chill.” I submit myself to the travel fates, obeying
airport authorities like a passive cow just trying to get to pasture.
This was my mindset when I approached
the security checkpoint at Southwest Florida International Airport last week. I
took off my shoes, slid my purse into a plastic tub, and approach the metal
detector unarmed. I peered at it—one of the big cylindrical ones—until the
agent on the other side waved me through. It was an annoyed wave, a tired wave,
a bored wave. I obeyed her taciturn gestures, avoiding annoying chatter, and
stepped in. I put my feet on the painted footprints on the floor and raised my
arms above my head like the picture on the detector’s wall told me to do. She
waved me out seconds later, still silent.
I started to walk away, but the guard
ahead of me, a young man maybe my age, closed a rope, blocking my way out. I’d
never seen anyone do that before. Usually they hold up a hand to slow a person
down or they say something like, “Come this way. I’m going to touch most of the
parts of your body for security purposes.”
I raised my eyebrows as politely as I
could, looking at the closed the rope with the obvious question in my face. His
answering bland face of professionalism was marred slightly by what I would
have called a smirk on someone who wasn’t a TSA agent. He was short, mostly clean-shaven,
and reminded me of someone I might see sitting stag at a bar, making eye
contact with any girl wearing a skirt.
Behind me the tall woman with the bright
eyes was glancing over my body scan. Nothing showed on the screen, but the silent
uniform was still holding the rope closed, staring at me. He looked at me like
I had put my hand on his shoulder, like I’d asked if he had a moment to talk,
so I tried to think of what to say—“Will you let me out?” “Should I go back
through the scanner?”—when the tall guard behind us spoke.
“She’s good.”
I looked back at the rope blocking my
exit, then at the man still holding it closed. He smiled at me before calling
to his partner. “Are you sure? Maybe we should keep her here a bit longer.”
I stiffened. I wanted my shoes back on
so I wasn’t standing there in my polka dot socks. I wished he really was the
man I pictured him to be sitting alone on a bar stool making eyes at single
women because then I could have rolled my eyes at him and continued on my way
to the bathroom. I wouldn’t have had to stand there in the first place. I
wouldn’t have sent friendly signals his way. I wouldn’t have “encouraged” him.
I didn’t even hear the weak joke he made
as he opened the rope wide enough to let me slip past him. It was subtle. He
was wearing a uniform. I was trying to be “chill.” He let me pass and I let it
go.
