It makes no difference what anyone says about flying these days because you just have to suck up all the airport rules, or don’t fly.

Tell me about it.

Having flown last week-end, just before the little terrorist wannabe tried to detonate something between his legs on a flight into Detroit on Christmas Day, I just don’t think I want to do it much anymore – unless I have to.

I flew to Cleveland from LGA/NY on Friday the 18th for a niece’s wedding and came back (under a two hour snow delay) on Sunday night.

All in all, from start to finish, I felt more like a suspect than a passenger.

Still a tech dimwit (these attacks can come at any time) and not having flown for quite a while, I was knocked back momentarily, not just by fumbling around to enter my confirmation code into the computer (Oh, y’know, just another computer protocol I never did before!  Never mind.), but by having to put up with a half-strip and shoe removal to get through security.

Was it annoying?  You tell me.

I had (I thought) removed all metal and potentially dangerous fluids from my person and my small stow bag before I left home (including my new, key ring-size Swiss Army knife), estimating on a common sense level what the TSA hound dogs might take away (No, I didn’t go online and read the entire, bloody list of forbidden items).  Anything potentially threatening, no matter how innocent in appearance, was left on my desk.

Anyway, after getting my coveted boarding pass and entering the instant hullabaloo of partially disrobing and putting clothing and the rest into plastic tubs and walking through the body metal detector, I then moved to the table to get my stuff and put my clothes back on, except there were some things TSA felt they needed to seize anyway.

One guy, standing near the X-ray over the conveyor and poking through my wool jacket, waved a three-inch nail file at me and said, “Uh-uh, can’t have that!”  And while I was putting on my shoes, a TSA gal peered at a plastic bottle of hair cream in my bath kit and said,  “Oh, we’ll have to take that too.”

“What?  It’s hair cream!  In a squeeze bottle!”

“It’s eight ounces.  Too much.”

Down the rabbit hole it all went, as I imagined myself commandeering a flight to, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio – armed with a squirt bottle of hair cream and a three-inch nail file.  In the annals of American aviation, stranger things have happened.

Unfortunately, while all this was going on, I noticed that I couldn’t find my house key, which I had put on one – ONE – small key ring.  No car keys.  No keys to my five thousand padlocks.  No keys to my various safe deposit boxes, scattered in ten major international cities.  No keys to my several secret boudoirs and romantic hideaways.  No keys to the various steamer trunks which, back in the day, accompanied me and my entourage during my many first-class voyages on the Queen Mary – to Africa, the Continent, and the Riviera.

Just one key on one small ring, along with underwear and a change of clothes for two days.

By this time I was upset, starting to feel like a suspect; but I had to ask:  “Where is my key?”

All the TSA people looked at me as if I had three ears, and I very quickly got a response which seemed to imply that I had lost my keys.

I asked:  “Where is my key?  It went through X-ray and now I can’t find it.  Can you help?”

They kept looking at me strangely while searching other people.

“I can’t find my key!  It went through the conveyor, but I don’t have it.  Can you look, please?”

So they tried, while a supervisor asked me where I put it, and did I put it in my shoes?

“I don’t remember.  I took my clothes off, put my cell phone in the tub, and my key, and everything else.  It’s my house key!”

“Did you check your shoes?”

“I have them on.  I can’t feel anything.”

Back and forth it went for a minute or so, while the TSA guy who seized my nail file looked at the X-ray screen, saying there was a key detected.  The supervisor confirmed this sighting.

Other passengers moved along; some glaring at me.  I turned to another guy who was putting his shoes back on, and I said, “You know, I took the train from Connecticut, the subway from Grand Central, and a Queens bus to get here.  That was kind of fun.  This is not fun.”  He smiled.

I took off my shoes again.  I looked in one and saw the key, and realized it must have nestled under the arch of my foot.  I took it out and waved it at the TSA supervisor.

“I found it!!!  Never mind!”  As I smiled sheepishly, the entire TSA crew rolled their eyes.

I moved out, got a cup of coffee and a muffin and took a break.

A few minutes later, I went back to the supervisor to clarify how to get to my gate, which was on another level.  He was very helpful, though still somewhat defensive.

“Understand, sir, we know what we’re doing; we’ve had this sort of shoe incident happen before.”

“Oh no doubt.  Weaponized shoes and all that.  Right.  Thanks for the help.  Happy Holidays.”

I made my flight and the one back on Sunday night.  But with it all, and with the news that further security protocols may, for instance, prevent passengers from even reading a book or a newspaper within an hour of landing, flying is not something I’ll be wanting to do too soon.

I refuse to feel like a suspect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFW6NHbWX0E