The Terrorists Have Won...

... or, I hope another TSA agent doesn’t even look at me crooked right now because I don’t want to go to jail for manslaughter.

Sitting here at the airport, fuming. Fuming because I just had to chuck a 12 dollar jar of hair paste, 4 bucks of brand new toothpaste, another 8 bucks of shaving gel, and a 15 dollar push pump of sunscreen / face lotion.

Well to be honest, I could have kept the face lotion by exiting back out of the security line and m’er f’in _buying_ a clear plastic baggie in which to hold it? But I’ll be damned if I play their games. How much sense does that even make?

O man, I could not be more pissed. Well that’s probably a lie, but for the sake of argument, I’m pretty fuckin pissed. *note the curse word to denote extreme pissed-offness.

I can’t even claim ignorance. Packing I knew I’d lose the items if I decided to not check the bag. I figured I’d make the judgment call when I got to the airport and would most likely check the bag. But the line to bag-check-in to the flight was so long. And the no-bag checkin kiosk was open. And the baggage claim at the destination was rumoured to be horrendous. I had little to no choice.

So I figured, what the hell. Would they really chuck my stuff? Would they really really not let me take it? I mean, I’m a rational person. I understand the rampant paranoia so ubiquitous these days. If worst came to worst, I’d just dab some hair paste on to prove it wasn’t some sort of WMD.

Flash fwd to having waited in the security line, having my bag flagged for inspection after passing through the x-ray and facing my arch nemesis, the black lady with a chip on her shoulder. After some almost neutral conversation with only the slightest hints of the patronization by which I’ve become so accustomed to tolerating, it gets to the point where I’m genuinely completely confused.

“I don’t get it,” I say modestly, “This stuff is obviously what it says on the cover.” I venture even so far as to squeeze a drop of toothpaste onto my tongue. I don’t immediately fall down and die. She remains nonplussed.

“I’ll get a manager to deal with you,” she mutters.

Completely reflexively I posit out loud, “Well I’d rather someone come _talk with_ me as opposed to _deal with_ me.”

The look she shot me could have fried a cat.

A rather portly (and tall) latino woman comes over and looks at me with as much of an eyebrow cock and “try me” face she can muster through her half-inch thick layer of cemented concealer.

I politely explain the situation. *Aside: I genuinely did politely explain the situation. I give everyone an equal opportunity to prove to me that I’m correct in generally despising all of humanity.

Earnest in my belief that once I’ve demonstrated that my “liquids and pastes” are not, in fact, guns, numchucks, and or throwing stars, I begin think that there is a glimmer of a chance I’ll be able to keep my stuffs.

Her cow eyes mock me. She is immune to logic and reason. She says I must chuck my stuff or check my bag. And I’ll be damned if I trust them to get my bag to the right destination after all the “trouble” I’ve caused up to now.

“How does this make sense to you?” I ask.
“It just does”
“What do you mean it just does? What is the logical progression that, having my demonstrated to you that these liquids/pastes are actually what their labels say they are, I still cannot keep them?”
“It’s procedure.”
“But how does that make sense?”
“Well if you’d flown in the past six months you’d know.”
“But how does that make sense?”
“It just does.”
“This really makes sense to you?
“Yes”
… Stunned silence by me … “Your reasoning doesn’t follow a logical progression. There is no reason I should not be able to take these things with me.”
“It’s procedure.”

Repeat the above x5. ::with my bits slightly modified to become progressively less polite and articulate::

“Listen, the hair stuff isn’t even a liquid, it’s a solid,” I whip out the one thing they left in my travel bag, my deodorant, and show them by rubbing my finger on both that they are fairly similar in consistency.

Her cow eyes once again mock me. Without a word, and a bit of a smug grin, she points to the word “paste” on my hair paste.

It was at this point where I imagined her exploding from her sheer dumbness/fatness. I was also getting a bit anxious that at any second she was going to call security because of my belligerence.

I could tell my anxiety was probably a bit on the high side because the pulsating vein of rage near my temple was making my glasses subtly bounce on my nose. I either had to go ahead and kill her or walk away muttering expletives to myself.

It was here, my constant reader, where I realized that my 271 dollar ticket had just turned into a 311 dollar ticket.

Actually, thinking about it now. I probably could do a good deal of damage with my freaking hands. I could totally punch somebody in the head or do a Hulk Hoganesque body slam to some poor unexpecting fool. Or, mid-flight, I could like pull on that emergency door handle, or even like take my keys and ball up my fists and poke somebody’s eyes out.

Herein lies my point. I’m much much more dangereous because they took my toiletries than I was with my toiletries. And I’m happy I got to use the word toiletries.