Airport Phobia

When I was ten, I knew the world was unfair. I was so angry about it. The injustice that really irked me was that everywhere I went, men were ogling half-dressed or naked women. It unavoidable: on TV, in bookstores, even in fancy art museums. All those women must be so embarrassed to have to show their fannies to the world. Men were gross, and they were jerks. Women weren’t looking at naked men all the time, as far as I knew as I knew.

Unfortunately, the first place I expressed this anger was at an airport. My parents were sitting by the gate an hour before our flight to visit our grandparents in Florida. I was in a bookshop flipping through pictures of koalas in the National Geographic. I saw a man who was looking at magazines in the “adult” section. I glared at him intensely, imagining I could summon Matilda-like powers that would cause the magazine to levitate out of his hands and crash into the garbage. As if he could feel the hatred in my eyes, the man glanced back at me, startled at my scowl, threw the magazine back on the stand, and ran out of the bookstore.

With a sense of accomplishment, I strolled over to the cashier. She had seen the whole thing. Because she was a lady I assumed we were in cahoots. I told her, “Those magazines are so bad, I wish they would just put bombs in them.”

Anger colored her face. “Are you talking about putting bombs in something, little girl? Do you want me to call security?”

“No, no. I don’t want to hurt anybody.” I stammered. “I just don’t want men to read those magazines. They should put stink bombs inside,” her glare deepened, “so that Playboy would smell like farts,” I ended hopelessly, out of breath.

Luckily for me, security wasn’t called that day; however, I proceeded to live the next twenty years with a phobia of airport personnel.

Let’s skip ahead to a morning right after my twenty-ninth birthday. I was about to fly home for Thanksgiving and was standing in line for security. I was late due to traffic and the line was moving slow. Added to the fear of missing my flight was another fear: that my parents wouldn’t like my new Russian boyfriend. Sergey was going to be taking a later flight after he finished work. It was to be his introduction to my family and to the concept of American Thanksgiving. As I stood in line, I fretted that despite my warnings, Sergey would wear his camo pants to dinner.

“Boarding pass and ID.”

I hadn’t noticed I had gotten to the front of the line. I pulled my boarding pass from my pocket, and I fumbled through my wallet for my driver’s license. It wasn’t there. My heart sped up. “Excuse me, I forgot something.” I backed out of line and scurried to a bench. I began tear apart my wallet and backpack in a desperate search. Socks and tampons flew everywhere.

I felt a tug on my sleeve. A little girl held out a quarter to me and said, “you dropped this.”

“Keep it,” I snapped. This was not the right thing to say because she proceeded to stare at me as if she could Matilda more money out of me. Her big eyes made me self-conscious about my frantic search: it is hard to have a mental breakdown in front of a child.

Eventually, I had to give up. My flight was going to board in a minute, so I had no choice but to throw myself upon the mercy of the security agent. I got back into line. Tears sprung to my eyes as I thought of poor Sergey in his camo pants, alone with my family, struggling to understand why Americans put cranberry sauce on meat.

“Boarding pass and ID.”

“I’m so sorry, I lost my driver’s license.”

The security agent looked at me with boredom-glazed eyes and asked, “Do you have any other picture ID?”

“Um, I have my school ID. I’m a teacher.”

She took the ID from me and frowned. “What else do you have?”

“I also have my Costco membership card.”

“Very well. Have a safe flight.” She handed me back my school ID and waved me ahead.

I never thought I could travel without a driver’s license but it turns out you can, if you have a Costco card, a school ID and you look harmless enough. Which isn’t fair. I almost certainly would not have been let through so easily if I had been a different race or religion. Their discrimination based on appearances wasn’t smart either. They let through without an ID the would-be Playboy stink bomber of ‘95. But at the time, I couldn’t spare a minute to worry about these injustices. I had a plane to catch.