Not literally – but the spirit of the TSA is flourishing abroad, just as paranoid as here but without the friendly smile you sometimes get from TSA employees.
Last month I wrote about how airport security in Brussels searched inside the waistband of my older son’s pants. I realize they’ve got to be thorough, but my goodness, the Bear is nine years old.
This week, on our way out of Europe, officials in Berlin decided we had a suspicious amount of electronics in our carry-ons. They informed us that they’d need to check several of our bags for explosives. And then they ordered both my husband and me to come with them.
We said, “Um, our kids are nine and six. You aren’t seriously suggesting we leave them here alone at the gate?”
Yes, they were.
My husband and I said, no. That won’t work. And we repeated it until finally the guard said huffily, “Well, if your husband can carry all the bags, then you can stay here.” By then the Bear was in tears.
Are we feeling safer yet?
Update 7/26/09: In comments, Sora points out that Southeast Asia, where she’s traveled extensively, wouldn’t treat kids this way. So maybe this sort of misbehavior is peculiar to the Western world.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Hey Sungold…welcome back. I think one of the differences between your TSA experiences and our family’s is where it occurs. In SE Asia there would be no way any official would ask people to leave behind kids. Nor would there be a scene about searching kids. One of my kids forgot he had some scissors in his pack. Very efficiently the security took them, and searched his pack, but never was he pulled away from us or subject to a strip search! I doubt they do strip searches, they don’t even ask for shoes to be taken off.
Or could it be that you guys just look shifty!!
Yep, that’s it – we do look shifty! Especially the kids!
I actually don’t think any TSA employee would risk a lawsuit by separating kids from their parents. Then again, the TSA in Dulles tossed around our laptops like footballs, so maybe I’m overestimating their caution.
But it’s interesting that SE Asia handles things so differently. It’s not like they haven’t endured terror attacks themselves. There are definitely different values in play.
There’s nothing some people like more than being given an unexceptionable sounding excuse for giving other people a hard time.
In more extreme forms, does the Israeli government really believe that in casually bulldozing Palestinian property and killing civilians, it is striking the most effective kind of blow against terrorism?
If someone treated me like a sub-standard form of life, and/or killed a child of mine, might I not feel just a tad radicalised?
No, I don’t feel safer yet, while anti-terrorism is being used as an excuse for everything from petty sadism to xenophobic violence.
It all comes down to looking as though action is being taken, doesn’t it? And that opens the floodgates to all kinds of behavior that would otherwise be unacceptable.
That settles it, when I go to Germany in a couple of weeks, my laptop stays here.
Umm, we had three laptops (mine, my husband’s, and my old one as rainy day entertainment), plus a LeapPad (which got the bomb squad called on us last year, so we took it out for inspection), plus a DVD player, an MP3 player, and assorted cables for all of the above.
With a single laptop, you might be just fine.