Travel*

Holiday travel is always a series of offenses, especially airport security. Between removing your shoes, clothes, liquids, laptops, and being screamed at to never let your boarding pass leave your hand the entire time, you can't help but feel like you are some sort of livestock. 

(An aside to TSA. I know I have to walk through the metal detector with my boarding pass in my hand so the person on the other side of the metal detector will see I have a boarding pass even though it was checked about 10 seconds ago. Everyone knows this. This is how things have been since the beginning of time - it was carved on the tablet that Moses brought down from the mountain - I want to say it was number 8?  However, I usually slip it in my pocket so I can do the thirty things I need to do to go through security in the allotted five seconds I have before the 600 people behind me get murderous. So, if you don't happen to see it in my hand as I am swearing quietly under my breath trying to separate out a non-threatening amount of liquids and gels, don't you worry, I haven't forgot it. There is no need to constantly scream at me to keep it out. If I had a third arm, I would, but I don't. So let's just try to be a little bit cooler about this alright?)

On the plane, I started talking to a woman with a baby. She was obviously of Arab descent, she had a black robe that covered her entire body with the exception of her face. As little Abdul (his actual name, I said they were Arab remember?) cooed and smiled at me, she told me about her time with airport security. 

TSA insisted on checking INSIDE the babies diaper. That's right, the baby who somehow managed to make it through the metal detector with his mother and boarding pass could somehow be packing heat in his diaper. This woman was obviously racially profiled, and because she wanted to get on her flight, she had to comply. I do not know if disrobing babies is standard practice, but this was the first I had every heard of it. 

Abdul, being 10 months old, which sort of gives him a pass from reasoning like an adult decided that he did not have to comply. 

So when the TSA agent opened his diaper, he started PEEING. All over her. 

"Can't you control this?' the agent asked his mother. She answered, "I do, by putting a diaper on him. He's 10 months old, what do you expect?". Even though I wasn't there (and oh my how I wish I was, because I think I would have laughed to the point of wetting myself a little bit), I like to think that little Abdul wasn't just peeing on TSA for himself, but a little bit for all of us who have had to deal with the indignities of a crazed security agency with its rules that at times, make absolutely no sense. 

*I have to say though, after flying in Europe, our security policies seem like they are rolling out the red carpet.