In a Pickle

As often as possible, I avoid flying on commercial airplanes. This is not because I have a fear of flying. It’s also not because I have a fear of crashing, which is what most people mean when they say they’re afraid of flying. No one is actually afraid of flying. It’s either falling or crashing they’re adamantly opposed to. And I don’t blame them.

Not that I haven’t intentionally fallen almost two miles. I once exited a perfectly functioning airplane while it was flying along at 10,000 feet ‘AGL,’ which is pilot talk for ‘Above Ground Level.’ And if my parachute hadn’t opened, I would’ve ended up several feet ‘BGL.’ That’s mortician talk for ‘his parachute didn’t open.’

Anyway, my aversion to flying commercial is not the flying part, or the potential deadness part, or the seats built for Ken and Barbie part, but the airport part. I hate going to airports, and being treated like a cow in a feedlot, and having people go through my personal belongings as if I were picking up their daughter for a prom date.

Of course, we want to be safe. Who doesn’t want to feel perfectly safe while flying along at 800 miles per hour five miles AGL in a pressurized aluminum tube built by the lowest bidder and maintained by the lowest bidder and regulated by people who are so incompetent they couldn’t get a real job and had to run for congress?

That’s why we have the TSA, to make us feel safe. The govexec.com website points out that the Transportation Safety Administration is doing a capital job. It says officials found 2,212 firearms in 224 airports during 2015. The next time you’re in an airport you should walk up to a TSA agent and grab him or her by the blue polyester lapels and give him or her a big, wet kiss on both cheeks, and tell him or her what a fine job he or she is doing. Let me know when you get out of prison.

On the other hand, you might want to hold off on the mushy stuff with TSA just now. ‘Today’ correspondent Jeff Rossen, and a highly trained crack team of news types, decided to put TSA to the test in November 2015. They were able, on account of their vast experience at operating latte machines, to smuggle firearms past TSA security and into the loading areas of airports 75 percent of the time. TSA’s own performance evaluations are even worse. During those, banned items got through 67 out of 70 times. Personally, I’ve never managed to get a fingernail file past those people. I guess I just look like I have a history of illegally and maliciously performing manicures on people against their will.

But we don’t need to spend an entire column beating TSA over the head for beating us over the head. Let’s talk about real safety. Or, to be more specific, real safe zones. Like bars.

Most states, even those that issue concealed carry firearm permits, ban guns in bars. Texas does that. And Corpus Christi, last time I checked, was still in Texas. That is, unless Al Gore has flooded it by now.

A friend of mine once lived in Corpus Christi, and worked at construction. He told me that one time he got off work, and decided to walk into a bar for a Coke on his way home (he usually walked home). He was stopped at the door and told he couldn’t come in with the small folding knife he had on his belt. He relinquished the knife and proceeded into the bar with his tool belt over his shoulder, in which he had a large framing hammer and a roofing hatchet. As far as I know, it was not a TSA bar.

So knives are dangerous items, which is why England has decided to ban them. This is not a joke. The Brit police are now calling on citizens to ‘Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife.’ I guess since gun ownership is all but a memory for the Limeys, there’s not much left to lose.

Just out of curiosity, I did a search for strange items people have used to commit homicides, and came up with a story written by none other than the British Daily Mail. Folks have been waxed with stiletto shoes, bludgeoned with guitars, sliced with spatulas, stabbed with a crucifix (complete with Jesus figurine), skewered with spoons, beaned with a toilet lid, perforated with ball point pens, brained with bricks, bashed with bowling balls, and, my personal favorite, pickled with a jar of pickled cucumbers. I’ve always said those are bad for you.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that knives are not the problem in the UK. I predict homicides will continue, even if they gather up every knife, machete, hatchet, hammer, crucifix, and jar of pickled cucumbers in the country. I think they should quit worrying about what people are killed with, and start worrying about why people are being killed.

But, for the record, I think they should go ahead and ban pickles, just to be on the safe side . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and public speaker who never eats dill or sour pickles, only the bread & butter kind. Write to him at [email protected]