Having Fun at Airport Security

First, pretend you're deaf. This isn't hard for me because I am, but you can have fun too by pretending.

I was reassembling what remained of my dignity on the other side of the scanning conveyor when Sally, my wife, started tugging at me. She was ahead and saw the guy behind me starting to come unglued. I of course hadn't heard anything, the airports being as raucous as they are, so at first I thought my pants had caught in the conveyor and that I was headed back to the X ray machine. This would surely explain her tugging.

But it was the goons trying to de-agitate the passenger behind me who was starting to act like Jack Lemon in “The Out of Towners” ("Fine! Give me your address right now, I fully intend to write your superior", as he whips out his trademark notepad). The over-large security guys were in that classic movie pose with left arm extended, finger pointed towards the culprit and right arm cocked back over the pistol holster.

I didn't see any of this until I had struggled forward trying to hold my pants up (they'd taken my damn belt and I didn't have it back on yet). By the time I had myself together and 20 feet farther away the guy had calmed down . . . there were four very serious looking cops surrounding him by then and that surely helped.

Next time I'm going in drag as an old grandmother so I can get them to push me around in a wheelchair. They’re too big to put through the X ray machine, too.