Dedicated to Becky Akers

I traveled from Denver to San Jose yesterday evening. Of course, that meant going through the gauntlet of inanity controlled by the TSA. Today I saw a TSAgent who still had “a light” in his eyes. He must have been new, because his joy and creativity were not squelched out of him; he was still smiling. Contrast him to the dude behind the metal detector who was using his “authoritah” voice to admonish us to remember the commandments for efficient travel and correct security checkpoint protocol.

Anyway, the TSAgent-who-could-yet-be-saved was checking IDs; I knew there was still hope for him, because he was doing it as mindlessly and quickly as possible. That is, he didn’t seem to take the exercise too seriously and was keeping himself moving quickly for fear of utter boredom. He looked at each ID, compared it to the boarding pass and quickly stamped the document.

When I went up to him, I noticed that the ultraviolet light used to determine whether my state’s driver’s license is actually a real license per the sanction of the federal government (i.e., whether the dokumenten were authentic vis-a-vis the Transportsicherheitverwaltung uber-diktaten) was shining on his arm. He was letting the black-light cast the narrow beam onto his forearm while he mindlessly passed everyone through the checkpoint. After he stamped my boarding pass, I said, “Aren’t you worried about getting skin cancer?”

I expected a confused look for breaking the unspoken rule that passengers should not say anything oblique or meaningful, but he knew exactly what I was referring to. He laughed agreeably, and shoved the light (swiveling on its joint) away from him and continued to stamp people through. I realized there was hope for him when he began to do the opposite of what his direktors probably wanted him to do: not use the light to authenticate every goddam license.

Hopefully he quits when he realizes he’s better than the TSA. Or it will be a sad day when his soul dies.