As I stood well back of the infamous "red line", waiting for my turn to be humiliated, I watched granny get the "come-on" hand gesture that signals it's your turn to shuffle through the "arches of death."
Suddenly, there was such a beeping and honking I thought for a minute we were on a submarine preparing to dive. That poor little old soul was immediately swarmed by a pack of voracious wand wavers. She was ordered to take off her shoes and unbuckle her belt, all the time standing with her wobbly arms spread out like a frightened bungee jumper poised to leap.
The wands passed over her head, under her arms, between her legs, through her hair, all the while screeching like a stuttering smoke alarm. Granny began scanning the crowd for sympathetic faces, but we all averted our eyes, not wanting to be associated with a known saboteur.
My frequent flyer line mates were now growing restless. Someone muttered something about a bomb. They may have been discussing CBC television cancelling more shows but I doubt it.
A disembodied voice at the back said "Some of us have planes to catch!" This timely reminder didn't seem to deter the wand wavers in their zeal to smoke out a terrorist on the always-dangerous Ottawa to Val d'Or run. And so, on they went, zapping granny's shoes, belt and wallet, confiscating her keys, coins and liquids. They ran her through the cavity search, the bend-over and cough exam, the lie detector, the double-blind taste test, the CAT scan and, for good measure, gave her a few shots with the Taser (a recent Canadian airport security innovation). Now, Mr. Minister, I'm sure you would tell me there was an outside chance that granny could have been part of a nursing home sleeper cell of al-Qaeda, who might possibly be recruiting and brainwashing elderly widows to storm the Dash 8 cockpit and, with their bus passes held to the throats of the pilots, make them fly the plane into the Peace Tower.
~ from We're winning the war on old ladies ~
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