Thursday, November 18, 2010

In Every Airport We Enter... My Husband Gets Searched...

All the recent news about the hassles of flying has me reminiscing.

Traveling with Paul, by air, is interesting to say the least. It might even be mildly amusing (if you have A LOT of free time). Because no matter how he's dressed the result is going to be the same. He could look like this...

or this...

or this...

or this...



and he is still going to be the pulled out of the line every single time and carefully searched and patted down before we're allowed anywhere near an airplane. It doesn't matter which state or country we're in.

On one particular trip he was patted down in London and Tel Aviv and then pulled out of line in Zurich and told his passport "had a problem" (they tried to hurry me away, but with my first trimester pregnancy hormones raging I refused to budge). As I write this though he did point out that at Dulles they let him walk past and grabbed the menacing looking 80 year old woman in a mumu to conduct a full body search on.

When we were boarding an El Al flight the conversation at the second security station went something like this: "You're knitting is very pretty" (turning to Paul) "please step over here sir." followed by a very thorough pat down.

I do understand why he's always targeted. He's a big guy. And it has become something of a joke in our family, because it happens (with the exception of that walk through Dulles on our way to another flight) pretty much every single time we enter an airport.

And no matter how security changes I have a feeling that the experience of flying with Paul isn't going to change in the near future.

6 comments:

  1. Yeah, I think it is because he is a BIG guy and strong too. How tall is he?

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  2. Awww... My husbands a big guy too, and Lebanese, so we expect it too. I've gotten searched a few times, but we haven't flown since we married so that's gonna be interesting.

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  3. I noticed that you have a special devotion to being a 'proverbs 31' woman- I wrote a post of that here: http://remnantofremnant.blogspot.com/2010/11/psalm-31-philips-fast-advent.html

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  4. It has to be because he's so tall and brawney. If a terrorist were built like him, security would have a hard time trying to get control of the situation because of the intimidation factor. Basically his size scares them. I have a feeling that thirty years from now you still have the same problem.

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