Travel Fast, Travel Naked

I sent my husband to the airport with the following note:

Dear TSA and Department of Homeland Security,

Please excuse my husband from being felt up by strange men every single week because of his anomaly. His anomaly is just fat. His doctor says its just “one of those things,” and he’s had this pocket or lump of fat for thirty years. It is benign. It poses no threat to national security. It is entirely a coincidence that the fat deposit appears to be living in the pocket of his pants.

Sincerely, His Wife

PS

I believe the fat deposit is the place where all the bacon my husband eats goes to die.

“How did the note from your wife [that would be me] go over with the TSA?” I wanted to know.

“It didn’t.”

“Didn’t you get felt up again, anomaly boy?”

“Nope, I just didn’t get into the naked-scanner-junk-touching line.”

“But I thought . . .”

“Nope. Not all the security lines have the Peeping Tom machines. I just got in the regular line: shoes, belt, laptop.”

He looked at me. I looked at him.

“Do you think the terrorists know about this regular line stuff?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said, shrugging.

“Tell me something. If you were a terrorist, would you put powdered bomb bits in your panties or in one of those Christmas salamis you can mail to Greenland via the cargo hold of a big old airplane full of cheerleaders on their way to Disney World?”

I looked at him. He looked at me.

“So you probably won’t need that note about your fat lump anymore?”

“Nope. Besides I have a plan of my own to protest the Peeping Tom machines next time I get stuck in one of those lines.”

“Do I want to know?”

He looked at me. I looked at him—with squinty eyes.

He got that “I’ve been a bad boy since I was twelve” look on his face.

“I’ll show the TSA an anomaly they won’t soon forget.”

“Will this display be animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

He smiled.

People criticize me for watching cable news every waking hour of every waking day, but what they don’t understand is that I HAVE to watch cable news non-stop. How else am I going to know when Sherwood’s carted off to TSA strip search land, deported to the gulag of misfit toys, and branded a dirty rotten salami smuggler? Hmmmmmm?

Linda (Travel Advisory!) Zern