So a few months back I'm going through McCarran (yes, wearing that 'loser' face) security and I'm instructed to take off my sandals. Not wanting to walk barefoot across the floor I pull out a pair of paper slippers (same as you get in a hospital) and put them on. Well, the TSA guy says that if I insist on wearing footwear I'll be subject to secondary search, no matter that I said I'd put the slippers in the garbage once I had my sandals back. I look at the other TSA people there and several immediately avert their eyes from me...in embarrassment? Secondary search guy just has me remove the slippers, wands my bare feet (?), hands me my sandals, puts the paper slippers in the trash bin and bids me a good flight.
My favorite footwear story happened in Baltimore. I was daytripping somewhere, so I rode my bike in. I get to the front of the queue at the metal detector and the TSA agent barks through the machine and points at my boots, "Hey, those are going to set the machine off, you're going to have to take them off." I look around, and the only seats are on his side of the machine. Since these particular boots laced up to above mid-calf, I barked back, "No problem, when the boots set the machine off, I'll be able to sit in those seats over there and take them off." Sure enough, with all the steel in the boots, setting the machine off was a piece of cake. I think the TSA agent wasn't used to customers barking back alternatives to the way he wanted things to go down, so maybe this guy decided to conduct an anti-terrorist field interview. So he's kneeling on the floor, eagerly awaiting the availability of foot-free boots, when he begins the anti-terrorist screening. "Yeah", says he, "I ride, too. I was going to get a pair of these boots, but, with where I work they just wouldn't be practical. I'd set these machines off several times a day." "So", says I, "when it's gotten to the point that the US Government is influencing your choice of footwear, haven't things gone too far?" The look on his face was priceless. I'd decribe it as a perfectly legible combination of a bold, "you can't say that to me, I'm a cop" and a terrified, "****, could that be true?"
My favorite TSA experience of all time had nothing to do with footwear. I was traveling via the small airport in Charleston. I got selected for special treatment. As I was going through the "Bad Boys, Bad Boys" bit, arms and legs spread, being wanded all over, I had a brainstorm. I decided that this Fed probably had a deep-seeded, perhaps instinctual, need to feel like he is providing a service. And I had just the question for him. It was hard for me not to smile when the question occurred to me, so I very gently set it up. "So, I'm not from around here and I wonder if you can help?" The wanding stops immediately and, from my backal regions, the puffy TSA face appears, smiling, right in front of my own face. "Sure, what do you need?", he asks. Struggling to pull this off smoothly, I ask, "How far to
America from here?" A fuse blew right there. He came back with something like, "This is for your protection." While I wasn't about to accept his premise, I'll admit that I was surprised he caught on so quickly to the sarcasm in my question. "No", I said, "I am no more secure right here than I was when I left my house this morning." That was the last straw. This guy became the Tasmanian Devil, making that generator noise and spinning as he approached each of his 5, or so, TSA buddies who were just sort of standing around doing nothing. His question for each was, "Did you hear what he said? He said, how far to
America! Can you believe that?"
Incredibly, I got gypped out of the rest of my wanding.
