Ray St. Louis
12/23/04
BETWEEN THE LINES
This is for my young 20-year-old friend, James, who has never been on an airplane in his life but is
preparing to fly home for the holidays:
Ray’s Helpful, Holiday Travel Tips
The following are gathered from various and sundry sources and are lumped together here with no
concern whatsoever for order or coherence.
James, my friend, let me begin with my mother’s one and only travel tip that fit all traveling situations
and spoke not just for her but for all mothers: “Always wear clean underwear.”
James, you may not have thought of this, but if something were to go wrong and you were to end up in
the hospital, just think how embarrassed you would feel if you hadn’t taken the time to change into
clean, fresh underwear for the trip.
Of course, you might be thinking, “I have a compound fracture of the femur, several broken ribs, a
concussion and tubes leading in and out of my body; what in the world do I care about underwear?”
James, James, James. If your mother taught you anything, it’s that we must always be concerned about
appearances because they reflect on our upbringing.
Now go change your underwear so you’ll look presentable on the gurney when they take you to the
hospital.
The next holiday travel tip comes from the official Website of the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
You may recall a couple of recent news stories dealing with the TSA. One story involved a lost fake
bomb that somehow slipped through the fingers of the TSA’s own airport screeners and ended up on a
plane bound for Amsterdam.
The other story dealt with customers’ complaints that the new TSA pat down procedures had become
too aggressive, resulting in a lot of clothing being removed and a considerable amount of groping,
especially of women and especially of women’s breasts.
None of this, of course, is mentioned on TSA’s official Website. It does, however, include the following
under the heading “2004 Holiday Season Travel Tips.”
“Do not pack heavy food items in your checked luggage. Foods such as fruitcake may cause the
airport screening machines to alarm, thus slowing the security process.”
So, while it’s true that the agency may not have worked all the bugs out of its procedures for
intercepting bombs, they’re doing a bang-up job at cutting down on the delivery of unwanted holiday
fruitcakes.
James, what all the patting down and near strip-searching adds up to, among other things, is another
good reason to follow your mother’s advice to wear clean underwear. Also, don’t pack a fruitcake.
From my friend David comes the following simple advice for avoiding problems with airport screeners:
“Fly naked.”
David suggests going to the airport wearing nothing but a trench coat. Then, when you are pulled
aside for a search, simply open the coat, revealing your totally naked body, to convince the screener
that you have absolutely nothing to hide, thereby saving time.
I should mention that David’s advice when I was faced with an IRS audit was to go to the audit naked
and seems to be his solution to all of life’s thorny situations.
With that in mind, James, you might want to take David’s advice with a grain of salt.
Finally, from my clown/magician friend, Danny, who always travels with a suitcase full of clowning and
magic supplies comes this advice: “Don’t pack any flashpaper.”
Flashpaper, in case you didn’t know, is the material magicians use to create the flash of flame when
they turn something like a handkerchief into a rose. It seems the flashpaper is considered an explosive
substance by airport screeners.
If, for some reason, James, you do need to take magicians’ flashpaper with you, don’t ask your female
traveling companion to hide it anywhere in the vicinity for her bosom since that area is almost certain to
be patted down.
Rather, hide the flashpaper in your fake bomb, which is much more likely to escape detection.
Good luck, James, and happy holiday travels.