I plead unease of the intestinal tract and equilibrium. See, I fought mild-to-worrisome nausea levels all day yesterday. (Bless my friends for putting up with my whiney-butt self all day. Bah.)
The kids arrived home from Arizona yesterday evening. As Wendi had a gig, I became the designated (quicker?) picker upper. I was dropped off at the airport, still concentrating on keeping my insides in, and made my way to the ticket counter to get my “parents pass” (for lack of a better phrase).
See, there are only three types of people allowed through the security checkpoint: Employees of the airport or an airline, ticketed passengers, and parents seeing off their children or picking them up. And that’s only one parent, not both, as we learned when we sent the kids off a month ago. So I got my pass and proceeded to the checkpoint.
The contents of my pockets: Loose change, keys, more keys, wallet, and… oops. My Leatherman Micra.
See, because I wasn’t actually flying anywhere, I didn’t give a second thought to the contents of my pockets. (Not that day, anyway. I’d thought about it the day before. Just not enough to actually take the Micra out of my pocket. Duh.) Had I been traveling I’d have been extra-careful about what I tried to get through the checkpoint. Really.
So the very polite, if not terribly friendly, TSA folks confiscated my Micra and provided a mini-lecture. Thanks, guys.
I did, mind you, get it back after the kids had arrived. But there are two amusing parts to this story:
1) Not one hundred feet from where my Micra sat in the TSA “office” drawer I saw an ad for… Leatherman. I couldn’t help but think, “Does this make sense? Advertising for sharp objects on an airport concourse, right near the security checkpoint?”
2) The ever-so-watchful TSA folks who spotted and snagged my Micra totally failed to notice that my “keychain” consists of an old, small pocketknife…
Comments
5 responses to “How about my keychain?”
That’s just as bad as when I flew down to AX a couple years back – paranoid about me holding the ex’s bag on top of my two carry-on’s and he was right behind me getting out id for the dang-fooled checkpoint we were going through. No rhyme or reason whatsoever….
You can ask Dan whether this is true or not:
I have flown more than a few times since 9/11 and I have even flow internationally. To date, the only person that has noted my happy slappy little key shaped multi tool is a guard in the Amsterdam airport and his exact words, “Well, they let you out with it, I guess I can let you back in”
Before they changed the rules about only ticketed passengers being allowed to go through security to the terminals, I was picking Lyse up at the airport and forgot that I had my bag of runes (25 little slabs about the size of a postage stamp, made of pewter) and my athame (ritual knife) in my purse. The guy who went through my purse and pulled them out, however, was wearing a pentagram necklace. He just smiled & stuck the knife in a drawer for me to pick up on my way out.
I keep a micra on my keychain. Last time I flew, I forgot to take it off. I just kept quiet, left it hanging with my keys, tossed my keys in the basket and put them back in my pocket on the other side. I think the security peeps are so used to people tossing keys in the basket that they don’t really look.
I so freaking love Amsterdam!
I’ve seen that same ad for Leatherman in the “C” concourse. Nowadays it’s just a black field with white letters that says “Leatherman”… Up untill about 6 mo ago, it was a bigger than life picture of a leatherman, with all of the screwdrivers and knives and stuff ‘splayed out. I’ve lost two leatherman to TSA, I’ve even lost a small novelty wrench. They can be so uneven with the rules!