When I flew out of SFO this week to fly to Chicago the security lines was a tad longer than usual but not bad at all. The line to check bags however was super long. I guess more people are opting to check bags rather than part with liquids.
I went through security and my bag was pulled out of the xray for a special look-see by the TSA. I packed extra light so I was wondering what it could possibly be that set off the alarm, turns out it was my toothpaste. The TSA guy also gave my deodarant the twice over. Had it been a gel he'd have confiscated it - lucky for me my Mennen days are far behind me. As he took my toothpaste, my favorite, hard to find, Tom's cinnamon clove toothpaste, he explained that had this been a prescription then I could take it. "Prescription toothpaste?" I asked. "Well you never know these days." He said.
As I was sitting in my aisle seat 37,000 feet above the Wyoming plains a german shephard dog walked past me, my adrenal gland squirted. When the dog came back down the aisle with its owner, I could see that the lady was blind and this was her seeing eye dog, how nice, adrenals stop squirting. Begs the question: which is more dangerous, my Toms toothpaste or a german shephard? How easy would it be to take over a plane with an attack dog? Super easy! So what if she's blind, come on, it's easy to fake blindness. Did she need a doctor's prescription for her dog? Doubt it. There was another dog on board too. It could have been even easier to take out a flight attendant or two with those. I'm all for blind people getting on planes and their dogs too but c'mon outlawing water, toothpaste and deodorant onboard flights and making me run my shoes through an x-ray isn't going to stop a terrorist from taking out a very vulnerable aircraft all it does is inconvinience travellers, get us used to giving up our civil liberties and scare us into believing that the terrorist threat always upon us.
