Jackie Wells-Fauth
I have done quite a bit of traveling in my life, mostly with Roy. I very much enjoy all the places we go (well, maybe not the campgrounds) but I will admit there is one thing I will not miss when my traveling days are through: security checks. Whether it’s into a building or across a border, I admit those uniforms and badges make me nervous.
Now I want to make it clear that I am not smuggling guns or drugs (although I think my picture is on the Crest wanted posters for trying to smuggle an illegally large tube of toothpaste through airport security) but there is something about security points that bring out the worst in me.
I’m a nervous joker. When I am uneasy, I make jokes at the worst possible times—like in doctor’s offices or during a job interview. I’m uncomfortable, so I make a remark about an embarrassing rash or I talk to a prospective employer about how I might have left my last job due to an unfortunate shortage in my cash box at the end of the day. They are jokes and the people I make them to usually realize they’re jokes, but it tends to make them wonder about me.
But the worst is when I am in a security line and they are all looking at me. I try hard not to make jokes about bombs in my handbag and I smile and hope I don’t look like the sort of person who would be smuggling a kilo of cocaine in my sock. But I am nervous nonetheless.
My first time going through JFK Airport in New York City, my briefcase caused quite a stir. It was my dreamed-of trip to New York and I had really gone heavy on the souvenirs. As my briefcase went through their scanner, it set off alarms all over the place, and suddenly, there were armed guards standing over me calmly demanding that I open the briefcase. I was so rattled, I couldn’t unlock it! At last, frantically sweating bullets, I got the locks undone and opened the lid to reveal…my souvenir mugs. They put their guns back in the holsters and I put my heart back into my chest and we all went our merry ways. No jokes necessary.
I feel bad for border guards. They have to determine within a few questions and observations if you are a simple tourist looking for a good time or whether you just look like a simple tourist so you can smuggle drugs, weapons and assorted terrorists into the country. On our recent trip to Canada, the border guard made the decision to search our trunk. I don’t know what motivated him to do this, but what he got was a trunk full of my hand-washed underwear, laid out in the trunk to dry. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I know he did not linger back there!
And then of course, there is the time I unintentionally propositioned a very nice border guard in Ireland. Last year I was in an airport in Dublin and as I went through security, I nearly hanged myself trying to take off my jacket without removing my shoulder bag first.
“One thing at a time, love,” said the security guard in a heavy Irish lilt.
Flustered by the line, the foreign system and his very Irish voice reminding me I was far from home, I answered, “Thanks! What else do you want me to take off?”
Now, before your mind goes to the gutter, I was actually thinking about things like shoes, but I will admit that the astonished look on the guard’s face was rather memorable. And it was my only time (I hope) that I will accidentally proposition a security guard.
I should have just made the joke about the bomb in my handbag, right?
