Monday, November 3, 2008

En Route to Houston

At O'Hare this morning the airport security people opened up my laptop, to make sure it was really a laptop, and had me open a bottle of prescription oral rinse. I've been carrying this stuff all over America and to the UK too, and nothing like this has happened. I asked how I was chosen and they said, "random." Of course I happened to be wearing an Obama t-shirt. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I don't trust those people for a minute, and I don't believe in "random."

8 comments:

Andrew Shields said...

Sure, and it's random when the only person checked "at random" is the only non-white person in the line (or the only one with long hair, as used to be the case with me).

Back in the early nineties, I borrowed a proto-laptop from my Dad and took it to Berlin, where it stopped working. So I was taking it back to him in the U.S., and the security people in Berlin asked me to open it up and turn it on to prove that it was a computer and not a bomb! I had to talk them into believing that it was a computer but that it was broken!

C. Dale said...

It is NOT random. I can assure you. I get extra searched all the time and it is because they think I am middle eastern. It is ridiculous.

Justin Evans said...

I teach high school and my students always wonder how I know where to place 'certain' students in the room as to best be able to handle them. I tell them it's random. I'm lying, but that's what I tell them.

BTW, C. Dale, my wife told me it's a shame you are a gay man because she thinks you are hot, so sometimes your lokks work for you.

Justin Evans said...

that's looks.

Jack Albrecht said...

Uh . . . Mark, were you carrying those purple dental dams along with the oral rinse? So many O'Hare passengers have had to divest themselves of those things that one concourse is nicknamed "The Village of the Dams."

Mark Doty said...

Jack, I always keep my dental dams carefully concealed inside a pair of socks, in the deepest compartment of my roll-on bag.

And hey, I'd say C. Dale's look works for him on a regular basis.

Jack Albrecht said...

Agreed - C. Dale may make hearts of the opposite sex flutter, but we're mighty glad he's playing on our team.

shoppista said...

I'm sure it wasn't random.

With me, it's my beat-up-looking old car that gets me stopped, always along the TX highway going up into Oklahoma, and always for some minor, sometimes nonexistent traffic violation. Once they get a look at me inside (white, female, middle-class-looking), there's never a ticket. But first they want to shine their flashlight in the backseat and ask me where I'm going.

I've never figured out who they *think* is driving that car.