I'm a business traveler. A frumpy middle-aged female business traveler. Not for me the obsequious service of First Class. No, I nod, drooling, to the lulling roar of the engine, wedged in the middle seat in the last row of the plane. I don't expect luxury. By God, I expect delay, inconvenience and discomfort, and I'm rarely disappointed. I endure skreeching babies and brainless wimmenfolk yammering on their miniscule cell phones about some imagined slight at the office. My guess is that *these* are the people who read -- and relate to -- the execrable comic strip "Cathy."
But I digress (actually, that's my primary form of motion). Sunday, my number finally comes up in Atlanta: I draw the short straw in the Security Lottery. I willingly trudge to the bag-search arena, only to be escorted back to the counter to have my bag tagged. "No, Mr. Williams says we ain't sposed to tag the bags." Okey-dokey. I trudge back to the searching zone and stand in line. I find myself in front of a hulking, overweight man who looks like he has slept in his soiled clothes after a long day digging graves. His latex gloves are stained, and the thumb and 2 fingers of his right glove are torn out. I insist that he put on fresh gloves before he starts plowing through my underwear. When he's finished, he makes what might have been a stab at decorum: he shoves one hand down his pants and enthusiastically anchors one errant shirttail. I shudder to think of the next victim. I resolve to launder my clothes when I get to New Orleans. Later I rethink that, and burn them instead. And stand upwind.
I get to the gate, where I again endure search: as I am being wanded by the female guard, the "blOOoOOO" shriek of the device prompts her to loudly query "Are you wearin' an underwire bra?" No, Luann, I have steel tits. Thanks for asking.
On the return trip, I am again singled out. At least the guards there are polite and kempt (that *is* the antonym for unkempt, isn't it?), but if they were wired in series, they couldn't light an appliance bulb. While I appreciated the small man's seeming respect for my underthings, his search was so perfunctory it would have failed to uncover a live armadillo in my bag. Which gives me an idea for next week's trip...
10:28:57 PM 
|
|
