If you listen to the news, you realize there is a growing alarm over the TSA's full-body pat downs. Here is what you may not realize. All of us with metal implants - knees, hips, etc. - and other medical conditions have grown accustomed to the humiliation of additional screening since 9/11.
Sure, we put up with it. We're patriotic. We were the ones in a big line in the glass cages, waiting for additional screening. We're the older women with hip and knee replacements. Yep, that's us. We were wanded - sometimes well, sometimes aggressively. Usually once the TSA agent figured out the limb or joint that beeped, we'd be quickly wanded and on our way.
So we got good. We got really good at wearing no metal, anywhere but where the implant is. Sweatpants. Sports bras. Yoga wear. Nothing that would beep. No jeans to roll the top over. None of that embarassing stuff.
And then came last month. I'm wearing my sports bra, yoga pants and not much else. Of course, the full-body-scanner operating TSA agents were all "on break" - I travelled a total of 6 times last month through airports equipped with full-body scanners and not one was operational - so I went through the typical metal detector and set off the alarm. Naturally. What you who don't have implants don't know is that there is no card, no pass, no nothing you can give to escape this. We aren't stupid. We just have joints that deteriorated.
So this time, starting last month, due to the new screening rules instead of the wand, it was a full body pat down. And the next time, sorry ma'am the scanner is down, it's a full body pat down. And so on. Airport to airport.
Trust me. I'm not boycotting the new scanners - I welcome them. I just wish they'd be operational. Just once. Just at one airport.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know this. Next time you glide through security with only the small likelihood that you will be selected for additional screening simply removing your shoes, coat, all things out of your pocket, your laptop, your whatever...remember, we do all of that too and still set off the alarm. We aren't stupid. We just have titanium in our body. But we're treated like we're criminals and looked at by the rest of you as if we are idiots. So stop that, please.
Just be glad you don't get the full pat down and feel sorry for the rest of us who do.
Happy Travels. Happy Thanksgiving.
