Allahu Akbar Security Guard

It just so happened that a couple of my cousins were on the same flight as me back from Florida so my parents drove the three of us to the airport this morning.

Going through "security" was, as usual, ridiculous. Remember, this is Florida in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. Care to guess the average age of the potential terrorists trying to sneak through security?

We were on a regular security line. The line next to us, although unlabeled, was different. It had one of those machines that puffs air at you (like Alien Encounter at Disney) and can detect:

• a recent flatus,
• whether you're wearing deodorant (and hence whether you are French or not),
• minute particles of explosives.

If you are on this line, when you take off your shoes someone will start yelling at you that you and your shoes need to go through the puffer machine. While yelling, everyone in the next two non-puffer lines will start putting their shoes back on. This brings out a second yeller. If the TSA is allowed to unionize, I suggest the first thing they do is protect the yellers from being replaced by cheap, foreign-made signs saying whether you need to remove your shoes or not.

I get through the screening unscathed. I've lost enough toothpaste to know the rules by now. One cousin was not so lucky. Apparently she had some make-up in liquid form still in her bag. Liquid base sounds very suspicious. As a TSA employee went through her handbag removing all liquids and placing them in her quart-sized zip top bag, I saw another potential terrorist being patted down.

This woman looked to be about 90. She was in a wheelchair. Since wheelchairs can't go through the metal detector (hey, why not make plastic wheelchairs for the airport?) they have to pat these people down. All the way down. The even made her lean forward so they could pat her ass. They asked her to put her arms straight out to her sides but, apparently, she could not move one arm. The helpful TSA employee took that arm and held it out for her as she patted it down with her other hand. Whew! That was close!

Meanwhile, my cousin is now having her other bag searched because once they find one thing, God knows what else you might have. (There's another good idea. Hire God to check people's bags. For chrissakes, he's omniscient! He can detect anything; keep your shoes on, no puff required. You could even paint arms on the wings of the planes......maybe, I'll just stop here.)

More trip fun as I remember it.