Is it just me, or does this airport security business get more and more ridiculous every day? I can remember leaving for the airport only 30 minutes before my plane departed. After a 15-minute drive, I still arrived in plenty of time to catch my flight. Of course, this was back in the day when catching the flight meant spending several hours crammed into a seat designed for pygmies, sandwiched between a decidedly unpygmy-sized woman with a decidedly unpygmy-sized, decidedly unhappy “lap baby,” and her decidedly unpygmy-sized, cigar-smoking husband; because the non-smoking section (a distant two rows back) was full, as was the entire plane. Okay, that was just the one time, but the memory lingers.
Today I am advised to arrive at the airport at least two hours before departure. Now that my 15-minute trip takes up to an hour, depending on the ridiculous traffic (don’t get me started), I have to be up by 3:00am if I want to catch an early flight. I can stretch it to 3:30am if I skip the three S’s and plan on getting my coffee at the airport; but, of course, the coffee shop won’t be open because it’s still the middle of the night. It doesn’t really matter, because I won’t have time for coffee in any case. I’ll have a considerable wait in line at the ticket counter because, even though I have tickets, I missed my 90-minute window of opportunity to check in on-line. My carry-on bag will undoubtedly be over-size and my check-in bag will undoubtedly be over-weight: problems that could easily be solved if my only remaining credit card wasn’t also over the credit limit (but that’s another story).
Having completed my initial check-in, I’ll have an additional wait in line at the bag check-in because bags can no longer be checked in at the check-in counter. It’s okay because it gives me a little time to prepare for the next event in my “check-in pentathlon,” the security station. Here is where the real waiting begins because, even though the airport has dozens of ticket and check-in counters, there is only one security station. It is staffed by several dozen security officers, so you might think they could man (sorry, I mean person) another station, but you would be wrong. I guess it takes dozens of highly trained officers to be absolutely sure that no one gets on an airplane with a pair of nail clippers or an inordinate amount of liquid. Okay, they are also looking for real weapons and possible explosives, but does it really need to take so long and involve so many people? We have the x-ray to detect bad things in the carry-on, the metal detector to detect bad things on the carry-on carrier, and now even the full-body scanner to detect bad things in the carry-on carrier. Even with two officers per detector device, there are still several left over. I guess they are there to personally search those 80-year-old women in wheelchairs who have been profiled as likely terrorists (I’m sorry Nana, it wasn’t my fault).
Speaking of full-body scanners, I understand that they are being redesigned to alter the way genitals appear on the screen of the scanner. Rather than depict actual genitals, that portion of the scan is overlaid with an image of an average sized genital for what, I assume, is the appropriate gender of the scanee. I can only imagine what the reasoning must be. Someone must have decided that while most travelers were not concerned about having their private areas on display, they were very concerned that the truth about the size of those private areas (at least in the diminutive) might be somewhat embarrassing. The overlay should work because no one, diminutive or otherwise, would ever think to hide explosives or other bad stuff in or under their private areas.
Of course, after finally maneuvering the main security check, there’s still the individual gate security check-in (it’s true, our airport even has a big handwritten sign that reads “YES AGAIN!”) and the final check in at the gate itself. The good news is that just a couple hours after arriving at the airport, if you have been successful completing the check-in pentathlon, you may be allowed to board your flight: that is, of course, if it hasn’t been delayed or cancelled, which all too often, it has.
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