Not So Rapid Transit

Like everybody else, I give myself a lot of extra time when I am headed to the airport to catch a flight. I know that no matter how prepared I am in advance to put my laptop in its own bin and remove my baggie full of liquids from my carryon and take off my shoes and my belt and my oversized metal watch, there is bound to be confusion ahead of me in the security line.

And that’s all okay. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when the TSA agents watching the mysterious x-ray monitor make a catch – a pair of scissors, a bottle of water, a blow dryer that could easily be mistaken for a pistol. Or when agents watching the stuff come out the other side of the screening belt are astute enough to notice traces of a mysterious white powder on the handles of, say, a diaper bag. You can never be too careful these days, and things only promise to get worse. I have been dieting and exercising furiously in anticipation of the day when we must all shed everything and pass through security buck-naked.

But there are some things that just shouldn’t move slowly at the airport. Like the line at the Starbucks. Which is where I got stuck in a holding pattern for about a half hour the other day while the slowest person on the planet handled the drink orders. As if things were not moving at enough of a snail’s pace, the slowest person on the planet took a break from the rapidly building line of cups to fill the napkin holders on the cream and sugar table. The trip from behind the counter took several minutes; the loading – which appeared to be happening one napkin at a time – took an eternity. I could hear my flight being called in the distance, but there was no way in hell I was leaving without my already paid for latte and my friend’s half-caff with a hot soy topper, which, unfortunately, was missing the soy topper. Oh, if only there had been more time.

Frankly, I would still be fuming about the Starbucks fiasco had I not raced back to the gate to discover that my travel companion had, after presenting his drivers license to the curbside check-in guy, been granted a boarding pass with a woman’s  name (Jill Ocean!) on it. And – as we were already at the gate and he was still holding the same boarding pass – we quickly surmised that the highly trained TSA agent with the high tech flashlight who examines everybody’s ticket and identification before they even get the privilege of disrobing for the screeners had failed to notice that this man was clearly holding somebody else’s boarding pass. Let alone the same boarding pass he had just put all sorts of official looking circles on a moment earlier when the real Jill Ocean had passed through. So much for warm fuzzy feelings.

Oh well. At least we can be fairly certain that neither he nor anyone else was travelling with a hidden water bottle, or with explosives in his shoes. In his underwear, maybe, but definitely not in his shoes.