Lara Hayhurst, a college student in New York, was appropriately outraged at the treatment she and her fish received from airport security over the holidays. She takes it out on the hapless screeners and cold-hearted supervisors in this delightful essay:
[After being stopped by screeners] I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was. But the TSA supervisor was called over, and he berated me profusely. He exclaimed that in no way, under no circumstances, was a small fish allowed to pass through security, regardless of what the ticket agents said.
Mr. Supervisor was causing a grand scene, marshaling the full authority of the TSA to refuse me. Now, I know my fish is a terrorist (Osama Fin Laden we used to call him back at school), but doesn't it strike you as funny that, with all the commotion my little security threat was causing, by now engaging the full attention of the TSA at LaGuardia, that someone who posed a real threat to passenger safety might be conveniently slipping by?
By this time, I was in tears. The supervisor furiously told me to dispose of the fish. Dispose of my fish?! What did he want me to do, throw him away?
Instead, she and her boyfriend became savvy fish-smugglers, complete with a distracting and effective emotional assualt on the airport employees:
We took a deep breath and proceeded [with the fish tucked into her backpack]. We loaded our things onto the belt before the X-ray machine and walked through. Once past the scanner, Trey and I grabbed our things and ran for the gates, eager to find the first bathroom to see if MJ was intact. On the way, we passed by the original security checkpoint we had tried to go through.
The agents were huddled together, and recognized us. "What did you do with the fish?" they asked, "What did you do with the fish!?"
Sensing a chance for comeuppance, Trey put on his "stone-cold-supportive-protector" face and said with great dramatics, "You know what ... we flushed him. We flushed him because you made us [pause for effect]. You killed my girlfriend's fish. No, you made her kill her fish ... Happy holidays."
I started sobbing again. Trey gave the TSA agents one last cold, steely gaze.
We turned and walked away. I smelled an Oscar.
The fish survived intact, but Lara's respect for the new airport security measures did not:
As I write this I sit with a cat in my lap and my fish, which I have aptly renamed X-ray, swimming contentedly in his glass-beaded bowl. And even though my actions may send Tom Ridge reeling and upset the karma of the Department of Homeland Security, I really don't care.
Honestly, they have bigger fish to fry.
Posted by kswygert at December 29, 2003 11:51 AM