Negotiating the “security” gauntlet

There is no such thing as a non-stop flight anymore. What that does to the flying population is introduce them all to the inside of an ever-increasing number of airport terminals.

I don’t think that they will ever get overly familiar with them though. During our trip last week, the PA announcer requested that if there were anyone in the airport who spoke Spanish, they were needed at the southwest baggage service area. Well, I don’t speak much Spanish, but conjugating the verb “volar” would be easier than telling which direction was southwest.

It also means that whenever they book a destination, they are going to have to take off and land more than once. That part of the experience gives many people ascent/descent disease which is characterized by white knuckles, sweaty palms, and anxiety.

But all that is nothing to compare with the experience of negotiating airline security which causes the onset of hysteria. Thankfully travelers only have to do that once per destination.

I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but in case you haven’t flown in the last ten years, this is how it goes.

First you stand in one of the lines which they try to make you think is short. They do that by guiding you through a narrow maze of ninety degree turns like the ordering line at Wendy’s. By the time you have arrived at checkpoint A, you have already traveled 50 feet in detours which is a good ten feet as the crow flies. At Wendy’s, however, you get a juicy hamburger at the end of the line.

At airport security they tempt you with this delectable treat: you are abandoned barefoot and standing at the tail end of a high-speed conveyor belt with your driver’s license between your teeth, your hat on sideways and your belongings piling up on your unprotected toes.

When you finally gather up all of your clothing and other necessities, it is your job to get dressed while hopping quickly away from the unloading area which is a bleak, uncarpeted, and chairless space where spectators watch you try to dress using no available extremities, with or without opposable thumbs, while hopping around on one foot.

Believe it or not, emerging on the other side of “security” with half of your clothes in your hand means that the worst part of the ordeal is over. If you were still in there somewhere--in the uncharted reaches of “security”--someone would be trying on your underwear, weighing your bag of Barbie toiletries, and confiscating (recycling) your nail clippers and your key chain while the agent at your gate half a mile away is boarding rows ten and higher.

Entering “security” is about the same as leaving, only you are apt to drop your picture ID three times while trying to trap it against your slippery toiletries bag with your opposable thumb while removing everything from the pocket on the opposing side of your body with your opposable thumb stuck on the outside.
Last week when we were obliged to go through airport security, every time I turned around, literally, Mr. B.’s driver’s license was on the floor. Mine, incidentally, was behind my ear.

So the Columbus Airport (CMH) has one of the worst areas that I have ever had the misfortune to emerge from security into. Right out of the X-ray machine and just past the conveyor belt you are faced with an escalator. People ahead of me were in various stages of undress all the way up it and around the corners toward the gates where airport personnel in charge of customer satisfaction had most conveniently placed some chairs. Remember you are shoeless, dragging a bag or two which you have not had time to properly close, and holding your pants up like a hip-hopper.

So naturally I complained to Mr. B. that I was afraid that my sagging socks were going to get caught in the escalator.

“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.

I checked the availability of his opposable thumbs, rolled my eyes and replied, “Not with the way you drop things.”

Learn safety by accident?

After last week’s article on the perverseness of machinery, I thought it might be helpful to follow up with one on the subject of safety—for my own good.

I did a little research on the topic and found out two things. First, there are lots of people who are approximately at the same level of safety consciousness that I am; and, second, that there is a long list of organizations, agencies, and departments whose job it is no keep us all safe.

Owing to the fact that there is an internet (which itself has some safety issues) there are literally at my fingertips, and yours, thousands of sites to help educate us on the subject of safety. Reading some of them could cause you to fall asleep and hit your face on your keyboard. Others might cause you to fall down due to excessive laughter.

Some of the fall-down-laughing sites are the ones with titles like “Funny Insurance Claims.” Apparently the writing skills of the claimants directly correlate to their proneness to accidents. Ostensibly that factor doesn’t apply in my case.

Here are a few vehicle accident descriptions from the “Swap Meet Dave” website that I simply have to pass on:
1. The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in a bush with just his rear end showing.
2. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
3. The accident occurred when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle.
4. I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before.
5. I left for work this morning at 7 a.m. as usual when I collided straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.

I once read a consumer safety article which reported that most accidents happen either at work or at home or at play. I assume that this groundbreaking bit of information is available to the realm of human knowledge only because there was a study or two done to confirm it. I look at it this way: there isn’t much else besides the activity of sleeping and not too many people are using knives or machinery while they sleep.

I guess it is the work dimension of our lives that produces some of the most intensive programs for enhancing our safety. Maybe there is no such thing as an accident—only careless, and thoughtless behavior of which there must be plenty even outside of the Butterbean household. Safety engineers try to help us overcome those deficits by thinking and caring. To that end they devise checklists, forms, tips, disclaimers and reminders and slogans to keep us all safe and keep manufacturers out of court. .

These slogans were meant to get you thinking: “Crushed hands or missing fingers may affect your golf swing.”-- and “Protect your hands, you need them to pick up your paycheck.” I am adding “Don’t deserve a ‘break’ today.”

At my other job, I saw a six-page safety checklist for construction workers beginning a job which required a truck. I think the whole ideas of the lengthy form was to keep construction workers in the office filling out forms where injuries could be reduced to the kind for which they might not have to fill out the ten-page worker’s compensation claim form—injuries like paper cuts, writer’s cramp, bruises inflicted by keyboards, and headaches.