Apparently, I’m a suspicious individual. Granted, I am a “sketchy character” with many “shady dealings,” which I would like not to disclose. Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I think we can best understand the situation.
Picture this: Port Columbus International Airport on a picturesque mid-Ohio afternoon.
Like millions of people around the world, I partook in some holiday traveling, nothing too exotic. However, I was in for a treat as I attempted to pass through the security checkpoint leading into the terminal.
Now. I have a habit of setting off the metal detector when I have nothing metallic on me (except for the metal plate in my head, it’s really no fun when I walk under a big magnet). However, much to my dismay (I truly enjoy confrontation with the airport “security guards”), I did not set off the metal detector.
It was my bags, however, that caused quite the commotion.
I’m aware that everyone who carries a guitar case must be concealing a shotgun or something of the equivalent nature. I mean, after all, who really plays the guitar these days?
Immediately, the sight of myself carrying a guitar case led the top notch investigators of the Port Columbus International Airport to believe that I was a terrorist.
It was as though they had never seen a guitar before in their life. As I strummed a few chords, they began to wonder how it was a bomb or where the bullets were loaded. The overwhelming evidence did not once lead them to believe that this wooden box with six strings connected to it that reverberated sound could, in fact, be a guitar. That’s right, folks, a real live guitar!
Once I had convinced them that it was truly a guitar, I realized that my adventure had only just begun. Immediately, I heard, “Bag Check! Bag Check!” yelled in fear from the man in front of the x-ray machine.
I had a feeling that this was my bag.
It was. I overheard the man say that my bag was “very busy.” I was tempted to say that it wasn’t because it was going on vacation, so it had plenty of free time, but thought better of it.
Now, this is the part that truly impresses me: My bag was thoroughly swept for plastic explosives by a matter of some newfangled machine.
As I attempted to show them that my bag, in fact, only contained a laptop computer and some paper, I was forbidden. “Don’t touch anything!” yelled the security guard, as though I was tampering with the evidence in the biggest crime of the century, or millennium for that matter.
I feel safer, though, knowing that they are checking my bags as I watch someone walk through the exit, where there are no metal detectors or X-ray machines.
Top-notch security.
By the way, my flight to Atlanta left the gate twenty minutes late, and we still had to sit on the runway for another ten (just in case you were wondering).