The Air Out There

By Ken Davis

When my wife, Pam, and I took a trip to Vancouver Island, we discovered things had changed since the last time we flew.

We got to the Winnipeg airport early, only to stand in a line longer than the ones at Disney’s Splash Mountain. We inched along like good little lemmings, and then were greeted by an overly bubbly check-in girl.

Yes, we packed our own suitcases. No, nobody else touched, tampered or fondled them. Yes, I would like to check my wheelchair. Yes, they are gel cell batteries. No, I don’t think your eye liner makes you look cheap. No, I’ve never been to Aruba. Yes, I do think you’re attractive, but the woman standing beside me here, with the vein throbbing in her forehead, is my wife and I think it would be best if – OOWW! Sorry, gotta go.

Next, came the security check. As I can’t go through the metal detectors with my chair, this means a hand search – always a great source of amusement. As the only male on duty was busy intimidating a rabbi, I was to be searched by a woman resembling Alanis Morrisette, except with better hair.

She started by patting my left foot and moving up my left leg, and then moved to my right foot and leg. She stopped and slowly looked at me. “Leg bag,” I said with my winningest smile. You would have thought that I had just explained Einstein’s theory of relativity to her. Her brow knitted and she patted the half-full sack again. She then did something that in 15 years of air travel no one has ever done before: she followed the bag up to the connecting tube, and followed that to its end. She then knitted her brow quizzically, and while she held what she thought was the end of the tube, I said, “Penis.”

Pam found me 20 minutes later at the end of the line again. I tried to explain that I wanted to be searched by Alanis again, but Pam said that Alanis had probably had enough excitement for one day, and we had more important issues at hand.

It seems that my battery-operated nose hair clippers were causing quite the commotion. An overly exuberant security guard was trying to convince his supervisor that the owner of the nose hair clippers could easily disembowel the entire flight crew with them.

To the boss’s credit, he appeared dubious. “Would you mind if a member of the flight crew held onto these until after the flight?” he asked us sheepishly. “Not at all,” I replied. “In fact, I noticed a couple of stewardesses who could use them.”

Now, I don’t want to complain about any airline in particular, nor do I want to be sued, so let’s just say that we traveled on a fictional airline called Nair Wanada, and the service was horrendous. Suffice to say, that in this era of cutbacks, when you fly make sure that you pack food, because airlines believe they are hauling camels.

It seemed that we had just landed for our holiday, when we were heading back to the airport to go home. Check-in went quickly. Then, disaster struck: several people were gathered around my carry-on bag and they were treating it as if it was full of cobras. Initially my surgical scissors were deemed a national security threat, and then they really hit paydirt. The leader of the Keystone Cops was a small, weather-beaten man, with a head like a withered potato and whose only English word appeared to be “No.” He had discovered my Skin Bond, a glue-like substance used to hold my catheter on. Unfortunately, the words “extremely flammable” appear on the can, with a picture of a roaring fire.

Potato-head looked at me, then looked at the can and said, “No.”

“I need it to attach my catheter,” I replied calmly.

“No,” said Potato-head.

“Listen buddy,” I said a little too loudly, “I need that stuff to attach my catheter to my penis.” The two ladies from Nair Wanada who were assisting us slid a little to the left, pretending to assist someone else.

“No. No. No,” squealed Potato-head.

Pam stepped in and tried to reason with the man, as I attempted to stand and strangle him, which is no easy task for a quadriplegic.

After ten minutes of heated discussion between Nair Wanada officials, Potato-head and Pam, during which I heard my penis mentioned several times, we were finally allowed to keep the scissors and the Skin Bond. This deal was contingent upon us promising not to attack the crew and glue them together.

As the plane lifted off, Pam had a great idea. To make security’s job much easier, all passengers should travel nude, with no carry-on. Makes sense to me.

(Ken Davis lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.)