No Fly List
“I’m in the airport,” I realize as blood is running down the side of my face onto the cold linoleum floor. Everything is blurry, even the sounds swirling around me, but I begin to put things together. I was there trying to get to Pittsburgh to visit some old friends. I was travelling without my family for the first time in years, so I took my carry-on straight to security and stood in line judging the other travelers. Watching them unload their pockets, I imagine which of them is hiding something. When an exhausted young couple suddenly left the line to tend to their child’s spontaneous nosebleed, I saw him.
A beefy man-child wearing flip-flops, cargo shorts, and an old t-shirt stood there sweating. The shirt read, “Dying Fetus,” on the front and pictured a cartoon fetus out of an old medical pamphlet. As the smell of his feet during a three-hour flight filled my nose, he turned around to reveal the back of his shirt, which read, “Warfare Forever.”
“That’s the one,” I thought.
My guess was he had at least two homemade daggers in the side pockets of his cargo shorts and a manifesto tattooed on his belly. I couldn’t wait to watch as the TSA agents took him down in a wave of overbearing fury. Instead, he tipped an imaginary cap to the grouch running the checkpoint and cruised through casually. “Anyone else see that?” I wondered suspiciously. As I filed into the threat detector, the machine scanning what I assumed was someone else’s bag began to whistle and shriek. “Here we go!” I said in delighted anticipation. Lights and sirens closed in around me and a battalion of troops appeared out of the shadows.
“You!” a booming voice commanded. “Step to the side!” I panicked and squealed, “I didn’t do it!” A pair of agents ushered me away, but when I thought we’d stop for a frisk-and-chat, the men kept going out of the main security area and down a hallway I’d never seen. “Um, what’s going on, Your Honors?” I asked. “We’re going to have to ask you some questions,” they answered in unison. They pulled me into a small, spare room, locked the door behind me, and stood there flanking the door silently. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. “Sit!” they barked. I did. The bare bulb hanging over the table felt like a heat lamp on my face as I tried desperately to look innocent and not fidget, sweat forming on my brow. I was frozen in a movie scene when the door opened again, and a third agent entered formidably carrying my bag.
She set the bag down on the table, opened it, then closed it again before I could get a look. “You want to tell me why you’re here?” she asked through a glare. “You’ll never get me to sing, Copper, cause I’m innocent, see?” I shouted in a bad 1920s affect. My eyes nearly popped out of my head as I recoiled from my nervous outburst. “I’m so sorry. I’m just new to this. I honestly have no idea what’s going on.” I broke off as I remembered the gifts I brought for my friends’ kids, packed hastily in my carry-on.
“I think this is a big misunderstanding,” I pleaded.
“Why are you trying to sneak a weapon onto my airplane?” she yelled in my face.
“It’s just a toy, I swear!”
The woman slapped me so hard across the face, my eyes welled up. “Answer me!!” she insisted.
“It’s from Despicable Me, the animated movie, starring the incomparable Steve Carell. Or The Minions, maybe. I’m not really sure, but in whichever movie it’s featured, the minions use it to spray farts on people. This one just makes noises. It’s a fart guuun—a toot generator, that is. I brought it to give to my friends’ kid.” The agents looked at each other then back at me. “Give it to whom? Were you planning to pass the weapon to another passenger?” she asked threateningly. She slapped me again, but half-heartedly. “It’s not a weapon,” I repeated. “It’s a toy. It makes toot noises when you…push the finger-button on the front of the grip.”
“The trigger?” she asked.
“I don’t think I would call it that, no. If you’ll allow me, I’ll demonstrate the toot.”
“You want me to hand you the weapon so you can pull the trigger and show me what happens? Are you threatening me, Sir?”
I began to cry. The agent in charge looked back at her minions by the door who shook their heads to dissuade her, but she pulled the fart gun out of the bag and gave it a hard look. With her eyes trained fixedly through mine, she pointed the fart gun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
A long, cartoonish but realistic toot noise echoed through the room loudly in the dripping silence. “Get him outta here,” she ordered, disappointedly. They put the fart gun back in my bag and shoved me out into the hallway. I pulled my phone from my pocket and called my wife.
“You will never believe what just happened to me,” I began loudly. “The TSA just stopped me for trying to sneak a gun on the plane!” I paused as she guessed exactly what had happened. “Yeah, I guess I got away with it!” I said with an ironic sneer.
Picking myself up off the floor a little and dabbing at the blood still running down the side of my head, I can see the guy in the “Dying Fetus” shirt proudly leading a group of TSA agents in my direction, judging me.
- Written for “The Wrong Time to be Proud”