My Big Fat Airport Security Story

In the middle of our relentlessly vicious winter, I flew to Florida to deliver a lecture, after which I planned to sit in some blessed sunshine. There was precious little of that. It was cold, it rained, the swimming pool remained covered as the temperatures remained in the 30s. On my second day there, I experienced my second post-operative “spontaneous” fracture in the last seven months which made each step agony and which kept me confined to my dear friends’ very comfortable leather couch for eight days. Each day I hoped I’d improve; each day, like the weather, I only got worse.

I drove to the airport, hoping that the flight back would not be delayed by bad weather and that the pilot would not have make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. So there I was: Gratefully confined to the airline’s wheelchair, when I was told that both my companion and myself had been randomly selected for an extra-special, super-duper security search.

I kid you not: At least two men of Middle Eastern descent (who could have been FBI agents for all I knew), breezed right on through as I sat there. Two people did a slow-and-careful search of our carry-on luggage; they examined my computer millimeter by millimeter. Special chemicals were involved. And much time…Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>