Four out of the past five times I have flown, I have been stopped by security.
The first time was when my hands were checked for chemicals. A security guard swiped my hand with a toilette, for lack of a better word, and fed it into the reader. Now here's the crazy part: I had just washed my hands. Somehow in the short period between the bathroom and security, I had managed to pick up a strange chemical. So, as would naturally follow, my luggage was checked and I got the full pat-down.
The second time, I washed my hands extra well, and I still managed to get stopped. This time it was because they had found a suspicious object in the bottom of my backpack. Now let me back up a minute. I am going to assume that everyone is very familiar with the fifty-pound weight limit requirement. I had weighed my suitcase again and again and again, and it somehow still managed to be about three or four pounds over the limit. This meant that anything heavy we could find was placed in my already-stuffed backpack, which was serving as my carry-on. By the end of it my backpack was so full we couldn't have stuffed in another sock, and carrying it around the airport hurt my back so much that I carried it in my arms, which ached horribly until they went numb.
Now back to the story: the "suspicious object" they had found was at the bottom of my backpack. It turned out to be my i-home, which, when I could prove that it told time and played music, they let through. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was figuring out how to repack my backpack to make everything fit. One of the security guards had commented that my backpack was like Mary Poppin's bag. I found the difference was that with Mary Poppin's bag, things could go back in as easily as they came out. It took me well over fifteen minutes to stuff everything back in.
My third time flying I made it through security without being stopped. Thank goodness!
My fourth time flying, though, was definitely the most eventful, which is something you do not ever want to hear, or say, about a flight. Just two weeks ago, I was flying home from Salt Lake to Atlanta with a layover in Chicago. Once again, I was stopped by security. This time, you'll never guess what it was. Apparently, they had found metal in my stomach. Seriously. It's my abbs of steel.
By now the full pat-down seemed almost routine. That's not to say I like it though.
I made it to my gate with plenty of time to spare, but, as luck would have it, our plane was to be arriving late, which was eating away at my layover time in Chicago. By the time we had boarded, I had about thirty minutes between the time we would land in Chicago and the time that my plane would begin to board, which I thought would be plenty enough.
The plane was about to begin taxying out onto the runway when it came to the attention of the stewardess that someone in the back of the plane was quite ill. A little over half an hour later, we were finally taxying out, and I was beginning to get just a little apprehensive about my connection in Chicago.
The moment we had come to a stop in Chicago, I bolted to my next flight, which, as luck would have it, would be at an A gate. We had come in at F. I managed to sprint across the airport in roughly six minutes, and I made it just in time to board.
Once again, we are about to begin taxying out when the intercom comes on. We are informed that the power source to start the engines has gone out, and so we get to wait for ground crew to find an external power source and start our engines. As you can imagine, this was all very reassuring, and I was not at all fearful about the flight.
The flight went smoothly enough, and we landed in Atlanta some time after midnight, only to be informed that the train system was down, and so we would be shuttled back on the tar mac.
It was odd walking into baggage claim through the front doors of the airport, but I wasn't about to complain, because I knew, with my luck, things could have been worse, and I wasn't about to jinx it.
My flight home proved much smoother. I had lost my abbs of steel over the break, I had washed my hands thoroughly, and I was certain there was nothing that security could find suspicious. As luck would have it, I still managed to set off the alarm.
"Don't worry ma'am," the security guard informed me, "you didn't actually set off the alarm. You have been randomly selected for additional screening."
Candidly,
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