You know, I didn’t really think I looked like a terrorist or anything.  Sure, I have a beard but I’m also pretty overweight and I dress for air travel — shoes I can slip on and off, as little clothing as the weather allows (usually jeans and a shirt) — and I make sure I put anything and everything in the bins that go through the x-ray machine.

Yet for the last three trips, I’ve been asked to step into the full body scanner so they can see me without my clothes on.  Yeah, it’s pretty intrusive and I don’t have the most spectacular body.  This trip, though, it got a little more, er, intimate.  Evidently the full body scanner couldn’t see everywhere it wanted to see so the TSA guy had to run his hands down the front of my pants to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything.

To be fair to the TSA guy, he did ask if I wanted a “private” screening and he used the back of his hands so he couldn’t be accused of “fondling” me, I suppose.  Still, it was even more intrusive than the full body scan since the TSA guy had to actually touch me.

I want to be safe and the last thing I want to happen is to be blown up in mid-air. However, there has got to be a line that is drawn somewhere.  I know that “profiling” is not cool but the only profile I fit is an overweight, middle ages white guy trying to get from point A to point B.

I guess random is random.

Be Sociable, Share!

•