Fly America: My Life as a Terrorist

It doesn’t take much these days to realize that our government considers us all wannabe terrorists. In their eyes, we are one indiscriminate mass of potential damage to the nation. You can be a baby in arms, have made your hundredth birthday, or be massively disabled: you will go through the sheep dip at the airport. There’s a reason why they call the passenger area beyond security the “sterile” area. We probably all are or will be after the scanning.

All this suspicion takes its toll on people. Take Sid, for example. He finds it demeaning.
About ten years ago, Sid broke his hip back-country skiing. He was found by some other skiers, hopping down the mountain using his cross-country skis as crutches. He drove himself to the hospital with one good leg. (And they say there are no more mountain men). He now has a metal replacement hip and a permanent problem with airport security. He claims that he could go through the system naked and he would still set it off (I may have to disown him if he tries this). He is offended when he is isolated in a glass cubicle waiting to be wanded, groped, and patted down. He now refuses to fly unless the only alternative is swimming.

I don’t usually set anything off, but I managed to land on a watch list at the Rapid City airport in South Dakota. At the time I was working with a project based at the South Dakota School of Mines that required several trips to South Dakota. On one visit, I mislaid the paper with the details of my return flight. I phoned the airline, gave my identification, and asked if they could confirm the time of my Denver flight. Apparently that did it.

When I went to the counter to check in, a security guard took me and my luggage to another room where he put my suitcase on a table. He held up his hands and looked at me: “Is there any in here that will make my wife an unhappy woman?” I looked at him blankly until I realized he was talking about the family jewels. I shook my head and then he took everything out of my case. Only after that was I allowed to get a boarding pass.

When I got to the gate, the security personnel dropped everything to focus on me, my documents, and my carry-on. “I’m a sixty-year-old woman,” I said plaintively as they looked at my pens and hair brush. “I’m not a threat to national security.” They were not amused. I had the uneasy feeling that they might want to strip search me and I might not get on the plane. I did get home that night, but it wasn’t over. The next time I flew to Rapid City, it all happened again. That’s when I knew that the Rapid City airport will always be on high alert whenever I travel through it.

Most people deal with this scrutiny with resignation, obediently offering up their belongings and clothing in the name of security—hoping that while they tell you off for not putting your toothpaste in a plastic bag they are actually catching the more dangerous things. Younger folk don’t seem to be so upset by it. Maybe it’s just that they are more used to the current world. Their high school probably resembled some Texas mega church and they’ve had plenty of practice walking through metal detectors. For them, the lines must simply be the way things are in a crowded, dangerous world.

To me they are a nuisance, an obstacle to where I want to go that I will overcome (as long as I don’t get too cranky in Phoenix and get shot). Sid, on the other hand, feels completely trapped. And he’s right. It’s a matter of pride. Older folk remember a more genteel time when boarding an aircraft was not a cattle call. They also see through the pretence of it all. Everyone goes through the sheep dip because the government pretends not to profile. We all know they do. My Hispanic daughter-in-law could pass for Near Eastern. Never mind that her family comes from the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado and has been there for longer than the US has been a nation--she has never gone through a security line without getting the South Dakota treatment. The irony is that for all this inconvenience, tests tell us that they still aren’t finding potentially hazardous things in luggage.

So where does that leave us? Sid will only drive or sail. I will continue to fly because I have to. When you have family in Australia and England, there’s no choice. I wonder sometimes if it’s time to bring back the glory days of trains and liners. But then, I suppose they would start massive security procedures for them as well. That’s because we’re all potential terrorists, don’t you know?