Keeping Tulsa Safe
Why is it that small Midwestern airports have all the most up to date passenger screening equipment, while some of the busier airports do not? Do they think Al Qaeda is planning to hit us from the heartland, or is the fear index just higher out there, prompting the local politicos to bring home more homeland security dollars? Of the three times I’ve been ordered into the full body scanner, a cylindrical device resembling a see through version of the orgasmatron from Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”, one was in Tulsa, one in Green Bay(I think it was Green Bay, pretty far north and more or less up the middle), the third was somewhere east. Tulsa was a trip.
I flew to Tulsa from my home town of Austin, Texas. The Austin airport is small but often very busy. Sometimes, if one of the three checkpoints is mysteriously closed, it can take one nearly two hours to complete baggage check and security screening. I’ve grown used to it. I haven’t noticed if the Austin airport even has one of those clear orgasmatron like machines. If so, I’ve never been in it.
My tour manager and I made it to Tulsa, played the gig, got paid, well, most of it, spent the night, and were back at the airport two hours before our return flight was scheduled to depart. It was Saturday, and the Tulsa airport was practically deserted. There was no line for baggage check.
There was no line for security. In the screening area, there were about fifteen TSA employees and maybe five passengers. Seemed like a bit of overkill. After I ‘d done the ex-ray conveyer dance, shedding belt, necklace, cell phone, change, shoes, pulling the lap top out of the bag and setting it in its very own bin, I noticed that I was being barked at. It was ten in the morning, the voice might have been human, it sounded like a higher pitched version of the teacher’s voice from the Charlie Brown holiday specials from my childhood. I held up my boarding pass to signal that I was familiar with the procedure. The voice became more shrill, I had to focus.
“You have something in your cargo pocket!” yelled the woman behind the voice.
“Yes ma’am, that’s my wallet”, I yelled back.
“Take it out or they will search you.”
I noticed then, that the only lane that was not taped off lead right through the orgasmascanner. Hmm… I wasn’t familiar with the procedure after all.
The woman with the voice approached. “You have to take everything out of your pockets”. I clutched my wallet, boarding pass and baggage claim checks.
She motioned me through the machine and I obeyed, but neither of us had noticed that the woman on the other side of the machine had her back turned, I realized too late that I had walked up behind a large woman with a Glock pistol on her hip. She didn’t startle, her hand didn’t reflexively go to her gun. She just seemed tired and slightly annoyed that I wasn’t familiar with the procedure. I should have remembered from Green Bay, but Green Bay was so long ago. I was beginning to get irked. Snappy comments were bubbling their way to the forefront of my half consciousness. It was still two hours until flight time and I was wondering if I could get in some serious trouble and still get out of it in time to make my flight. What would’ve happened if I yelled out something on the order of “No I don’t know this procedure because real airports don’t bother with it and if any of you ever flew you’d know that.”?
Not nice. And the woman with the Glock actually did seem professional and pretty much lacking in delusions of self importance. She ordered me to step back into the machine, put my feet on the yellow footprints and raise my arms over my head while keeping my hands together. I did as I was told, while the ghost of Evelyn Waugh whispered, “The pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous …”
The machine made a rather loud noise as the scanning device circled me. I was aware that some poor soul staring at a TV monitor was seeing a good deal more of me than any of us got to see of Diane Keaton in “Sleeper”. I was told to step out. The woman with the Glock (come to think of it, I guess they all had Glocks, or some such modern polymer framed hi-cap semi auto) went through my wallet and told me I was cleared. I walked to the conveyer and reassembled myself. I felt jarred somehow, more so than after the usual screening ordeal, and more jarred than I remember feeling after any of the few times that I’ve been bodily searched. Why is it assumed, in our culture, that an individual would rather be visually spied on than physically touched? I’m not sure which act is more invasive.
The lady with the Charlie Brown’s teacher voice sure seemed to think that the threat of search would snap me into line, but I’m not sure it will next time. I don’t relish being frisked but I don’t like that jarred feeling the machine left me with. I doubt that the machine increases one’s risk of cancer more than does life in the twenty-first century, with its constant bath of electromagnetism from cell phones and all our other necessities, but I don’t like the machine. Still, I might be hesitant to request a bodily search for fear that to do so might place me under extra suspicion and increase the hassle potential in an already hassle filled day of travel.
Tim, my tour manager, was waiting in the hall when I finally got myself back in order. “Glad they’re keeping Tulsa safe,” he said.
