My teenaged son had marched through the security gate at the Baltimore airport. He waved and shouted, “Hey, mom, I’m going to get a pizza. Want some?” I nodded an emphatic No. “Ok, see you at the gate.” I started to wave back, but he was gone.
I threw my small backpack and shoes into the plastic bin and shoved it through the ramp to the X-ray machine. I waited my turn, calm and relaxed. My ADHD tendences had us arriving early to catch our flight to Los Angeles to see my daughter. As I waited in line and watched my son’s back as he jogged down the hall to the gate, I suddenly realized that traveling alone would soon become the norm with both kids in college.
“Hello. Pay attention. Please step through. I’m not telling you again.”
Awoken out of my reverie, I glanced up to see a rather stout woman in an official TSA blue uniform waving me towards the security body scanner. I walked through, turned, and took the ‘you’re under arrest’ stance before the camera. She motioned me forward. I took three steps to get my backpack when her hand flew up in front of my face so close, I could see the brown creases and sweat of her palm. Instinctively, I stopped. I could hear a light buzz on the conveyor ramp but didn’t dare look down.
“Step over here.” She motioned me off to the side, grabbed my bag and motioned to another taller female TSA agent with long flowing, blue-tinged braided hair. “Follow us.”
They began to march in military stride, one beside the other, boots hitting the floor in unison. Since I was a good half a foot shorter and probably three decades older, I was having troubles keeping up with them until they stopped in front of a grey padded wall. The stout one reached for a key in her back pocket and somehow found a concealed keyhole over the cloth that opened a door into a similarly gray padded walled room. She signaled me inside.
I glanced behind me to see if I could wave to my son that I had been delayed, but he was nowhere in sight. When pizza beckons a teenage boy, his attention becomes hawk-focused sharply on his prey—courtyard food. Nothing could stop him.
Normally I’m a bit claustrophobic in an elevator much less inside a padded cell with only a metal chair and no windows, but my curiosity got the best of me. I could see myself in an imaginary novel or film, entering unknown territory as both security agents walked inside behind me. The door shut with a click. The stout agent placed my backpack purse on the chair. It was then that I realized the buzzing I had heard on the conveyor belt had been emanating from my own carryon.
“My bad,” I said, “I think that’s my vibrator going off.” I laughed nervously and added, “A girls got to entertain herself somehow late at night alone, right?” I gave them my biggest ‘gee, sorry I’m a sex maniac but I’m really a harmless old lady’ grin.
Neither moved, smiled, or chuckled. They just stared at me, as if to say, ‘what a lackluster performance that was.’
The taller one pulled out rubber gloves from her vest pocket and placed them with great care and what seemed to me deliberate slowness over her hands. As I watched her, I was in awe of her long, graceful brown fingers slipping into the gray latex gloves. I had played violin for decades and was envious of anyone with digits that might be able to fly up and down a string or along a keyboard with ease.
Ignoring where I was, or why, I said, “Are you a musician? Your hands look like they could play any string instrument.” She stopped and glanced at her partner. Then turned back to me.
“Don’t talk ‘til we tell you to talk.”
With that she picked up my bag and the two of them walked out, closing the door behind them. The click of the door lock seemed louder than when I entered. A few minutes grew into ten and I began to worry what my son would be thinking about now. I doubt he’d care why I was being held or how it happened, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask. I began to worry that I’d miss the plane, despite the early start.
I walked over to open the door to find I was locked inside this padded TSA cell with no way out. Thoughts of old movie torture scenes or an inferno that kept me trapped inside swirled through my head. My claustrophobia climbed those padded walls and sprayed a shuddering fear over my entire being.
Get ahold of yourself, girl, I told myself. Breathe. Relax. OOOOmmmmm. Namaste. Count down. I counted to ten in the old 1-Mississippi, 2-Mississipi fashion from my childhood, a new yoga breath with each number. After reaching almost nine counts of ten, I began to panic. What was happening? Did the TSA consider a vibrator a lethal weapon of female warriors? For some reason, the chant of ‘make love, not war’ from my youth echoed in my brain. I began to giggle wondering if my extracurricular toy might be covered under the Geneva Convention. I could hear the defense now. ‘She was held illegally against her will for the sin of carrying a sex toy on an airplane.’ As my mind wandered into movie plot territory about my fate and my moment of shame, the door flung open.
The taller TSA agent, her to the waist cornrow braids sweeping side to side as she walked towards me. I was looking past her to the open door, examining the various ways I might be able to dash past her and escape, when I saw her lift her still gloved hands.
She was holding my mini vibrator. It barely fit in the palm of her hand. The switch was covered in heavy duct tape.
She threw it into my bag, zipped it up, and said, “that’s how you travel with a toy.”
Before I could thank her, she had shoved me out the door. I turned back for a mere second eager to leave but also curious when I saw the other agent high five her. Both were laughing and grabbing each other’s hands.
I ran down the hallway to the gate. My son, with his empty pizza box barely looked up at me. I decided to remain mum. I smiled to myself thinking that the two agents just might have a funny story to tell their fellow agents about the sex-starved old lady with the buzzing toy who they scared the ‘you know what ‘out of for fifteen minutes that day.
Since that incident, I’ve always wrapped the switches to any of my playthings with dull gray duct tape whenever I fly. As I saw it, there was no need to keep shaking it with TSA agents ever again.
