Mortaine’s Blog

We all have stories like this, but I thought I’d share this one.

A few months after the Sept. 11th attacks, my grandmother (who was 89 at the time, I believe) flew from Boston to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a visit with my dad. She changed flights in Pittsburgh.

Grandma is very elderly, but far from frail. She is no longer 5 feet tall, and shrinking every year. She is an old, white, New Englander who has lived through World War II and is ashamed to this day that she still cannot trust Japanese people, but that doesn’t mean she trusts them anyway. She typically wears slacks and a top and orthopedic shoes (this story predates the shoe bomber, so we were not all required to remove our shoes when we fly). She is a perfect person to “randomly” search to balance out all the young Arab males caught by the racial profiling we don’t do.

It was winter, so she wore a coat, probably a tan overcoat style thing with pockets, kind of felted– you know the type. She was searched in Boston, her checked bags were searched and she was pulled over at the gate. Very thorough searches, all of them. Naturally, she had to remove her coat during all her searches so any protruding weapons on her 4′10″ tall frame might be examined. A screener rifled through her purse…. well, we’re all familiar with these kinds of over-intrusive searches.

In Pittsburgh, she was searched again between airplanes. Fortunately, they don’t search passengers departing from aircraft, or she probably would have been searched in Michigan as well.

After she arrived and thought about it (and Grandma, bless her, is as sharp today as she was in her 20’s), she realized something that the screeners did not.

Every screener had asked her to remove her coat. They had carefully wanded her. They had gone through her purse. They had handed back her coat and wished her a pleasant flight.

None of them had actually looked in, wanded, x-rayed, or otherwise scanned her coat.

John and I are going diving on Sept. 18th. Yes, how sad that it’s over a month away…. What can I say– we’re busy people. I’d like us to get into diving once a month, though.

Anyway, we’re doing a one-day, two-tank boat dive on the Escalade, the charter boat for Aqua Safaris (our local dive shop). Renting all our gear, etc., as usual. We’re taking Nitrox with us for the dives, which means longer time underwater looking at cool stuff.

This is going to be SO MUCH FUN!!!

Despite not having lost any significant weight in the last 3 months, my body has definitely changed. I’m noticing this especially today, when my wedding ring keeps slipping over to the side and bumping the finger next to it. I also noticed last night when playing DDR and having trouble keeping my pants up (time for new pants!)

I lost my nice G hook (crochet) yesterday. I think I left it at the restaurant at lunch, though how, I’m uncertain. Sigh. [Found it! Sneaky hooker was hiding in my bag!] I’ll probably just buckle down and buy the $35 full set so I can stop buying new hooks every time I start a new project. Mind you: I was using that G hook in a current project (a new purse).

Of course, buying the full set means going to Michael’s…. which means I probably won’t get out of there this time without succumbing to their Halloween canvas tote bag special. Sigh.

I changed Zoot’s water yesterday. I forgot to do it last Friday and skipped it on Monday; the ammonia alert thingie never shifted from yellow. I need to get some test strips; I think the alert might be broken.

Oh, yeah. And I’ve been listening to The Callahan Chronicles on audiobook; very good and funny stuff.

It’s getting REAL bad.

It’s just the next progression of things. Stand up for yourself. Don’t be a doormat. Lock your luggage when you fly. Get irritated when they search you. Don’t let the TSA and other Homeland Security bulllies get away with it.

Find your local ACLU and keep their phone number in your cell phone.