I Think, Therefore I Blog

(written 3/13/07)

It seems a rare occasion, in this lot life has cast for me, to find a moment of peace at the airport while waiting for my plane. Such was this morning. Granted, it took being slammed with a 6:00am flight, and thus a 2:30 wake-up and a 4:30am arrival at the sleepy airport to achieve such serenity, but please! I’m trying to make this a happy post.

Unlike so many other times, this morning’s routine was peaceful and pleasant. No lines awaited me, there were no problems with my reservation or tickets, the security guards weren’t surly, and the McDonald’s kiosk in Concourse B was open before 5:00!

While I sat in my gate area and dined on my Sausage® McMuffin™ with egg©, I faced the burgeoning bustle of the concourse corridor, and a thought occurred to me: at a busy airport in a major city, one could almost quite literally sit and watch the world pass by. Even at 5:00 in the morning, one can, in the span of as little as half an hour, encounter people from a dozen different countries, three times as many ethnicities, and a handful of languages. Just think what a whole day of delays and cancellations could do!

There’s the older lady who looks like she has a head full of short, white plastic spikes and Grace Jones makeup…who happens to be on my plane and in my row on the opposite side of the plane from me (no…NOT Grace Jones, but that lady with the spiky hair). There’s the family observing the Islamic faith, the women all wearing the traditional style of dark, shapeless dresses from the high neckline down to the ankles, following several steps behind their men. And then there was the attractive, tall young woman wearing a tight-fitting tee-shirt and short shorts, displaying her long legs right down to her low-rise, high-heel boots. Can anyone say “Fishing trip?” And I mean she was attractive despite the hooker wear.

I did my good deed for the morning…for the month…so I can relax until April. A young black woman was struggling with a pull along bag, a baby seat, walking behind an aimless toddler walking every which way, following whatever shiny thing, any baby in sight, any smiling face that caught her eye. The toddler waddled into my gate area, and the mother could only call to her. The woman finally got her daughter’s attention, and they made their way at the toddler’s meandering pace. My flight was to board in ten minutes, but I’m traveling light – another rarity for this trip – so I wasn’t worried about being at the front of the line this time.

So I acted on the whim that struck me, and caught up to the woman and asked her if she needed any assistance. At first she seemed as though she was going to refuse, but when she saw my empty hands (my backpack was slung over my shoulder) she accepted, handed me her crap, and picked up her daughter. Her flight was to board at the same time as mine, but at her daughter’s pace she likely wouldn’t have gotten to her gate until Thursday.

Every time I’m able to upgrade my seat to First- or Business Class, I’m always struck by the same thought: When is the last time you ever hurt yourself with, or felt threatened by someone wielding, a butter knife? What’s that? Never? I thought so. If a loved one was being threatened by a violent person, and you had two choices before you – a butter knife and a fork – with which to attempt to thwart the attacker, which would you choose? Come again? The fork? I thought so.

It is almost comical how our government, in the guise of the Department of Homeland Security, has knee-jerked and hind-sighted our travel industry into what has to be the laughing-stock of the free world. I received my First Class breakfast on the plane. I opened the nice, linen napkin to get to the silverware. Out rolled two heavy, stainless steel forks, a spoon of the same quality…. and a plastic butter knife.

I’m sorry, but a highly trained commando could do more damage with a spoon than a determined amateur could ever do with a butter knife. Do you suppose the DHS thinks people will feel safer if anything associated with the word “knife” is eliminated from a plane, despite that it won’t make them any safer? Will a black man feel any less oppressed by our society if the word “nigger” is erased from our cultural vocabulary?

Several years ago a would-be terrorist from England was foiled by a defective lighter and an alert passenger who saw the man struggling to light what turned out to be some sort of wick dangling from his shoe, which itself proved to have been reconstructed with some sort of explosive. In one of its more sensible actions, as a result of that attempt, the DHS now prohibits travelers from carrying cigarette lighters onto aircraft. Halleluiah!

Because of a more recent, though never-realized plot in the works by terror cells in England to carry onto planes volatile liquids in innocuous containers, and then wreak havoc in the skies, the DHS, in its inept wisdom, has restricted the amount of liquid one can carry on his person through the security checkpoints to three ounces, in small, clear containers inside a clear zip-lock bag. This makes sense at first, but do the Transportation Security Administration guards perform sniff checks on every bottle? Does gasoline or kerosene or grain alcohol in a three-ounce translucent bottle look any different than perfume or cough syrup or mouthwash? Can you differentiate between them? Can the average TSA guard?

What’s that, you say? “What danger is three ounces of gasoline or kerosene if you don’t have a lighter to light it with?”

So there’s nothing flammable in a plane’s cabin now that the little, tiny butane torches have been eliminated? Here’s a startling little fact: in order to appease the arriving smokers who must immediately dart from their flight to the nearest patch of outdoor space or other authorized smoking area to get rid of that awful, clean air in their lungs, the DHS and TSA still allow passengers to carry matches onto planes!

And who needs to smuggle flammable liquids past security? The flight attendants sell alcohol to the passengers right on the plane! In First Class, it’s FREE!

How much clearer should it be? NO FIRE ON PLANES!

If we must appease the smokers, erect smoking rooms (as some airports have), and install wall-mounted, automobile-style electric cigarette lighters so smoker passengers don’t feel the need to carry incendiary devices on our aircraft.

There must be other, better ideas out there. I can’t be the only one thinking about it.

It’s clear that our president has not appointed the office of Homeland Security with an experienced, proactive leader who examines a situation and makes changes based on common sense, or who hires those who do, but rather with a crony who learns too late why you shouldn’t touch that pretty blue flame.

Great! Now I’ve ranted myself right into a rotten mood!

And is Steve Martin getting any residuals from the makers of the movie Happy Feet for titling the movie with the phrase he coined?