Can Airport Security Be Entertaining?

Its no secret that I hate waiting in airport security lines.  If I am to ever be arrested, it will happen at airport security.  Some who have traveled with me may actually have odds on it.

My penchant for efficiency and my smart mouth are not a good combination, it seems.  I have a couple of friends who will not get in the same line as me for fear of being held up.  Guilt by association, as it turns out, is a real fear.

There was the time an agent got a bit too invasive during a lengthy pat down so I started narrating the body parts she was inappropriately touching.

Or the time I called for a supervisor after a TSA boarding pass checker decided to go through my passport.  Asking me invasive questions about countries I’ve traveled to is not a part of the TSA training or protocol.

I’ve insisted on certain pairs of shoes or coats going through in a bin.  Trust me, one broken heel when a pair got caught in one of those spinner conveyor things at the end of the belt is enough.

And I’ve had so many secondary searches over my carbon tip tweezers (a post-9/11 purchase).  I now know which international airports necessitate pulling them out in advance.  (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo Narita… the latter also has an issue with metal hair clips!)

I was dreading my transit through Frankfurt security this morning because I’ve had lengthy secondary screenings here in the past.  The exception has been at the First Class Terminal (which is another experience entirely).

Usually it has involved electronic objects (cords/cables, to be precise).  For some reason when many of them are in the same bag (one of my old American Airlines Eames amenity kits), it looks suspicious.

Today I was pleasantly surprised that German efficiency prevailed even though the lines were long.  This was good since security was the only thing standing between me and the shower I desperately wanted.

There is always an attendant placing bags on the belt in perfect precision (exactly 6″ of space between each object, each bag lined up neatly).  And any secondary screenings are prompt to avoid holding up the already lengthy line.

Contrast this with the 15-20 minutes I waited on Tuesday night at DFW’s Terminal A for a secondary screening.  All that turned out to be a fuss over the spiral binding in a notebook.  The attendant scolded me for having “too much stuff” in my laptop bag.  Ugh!

And then there is this on continuous loop….

How can you NOT love a video about the do’s and don’ts of airport security that has an element of romance?