It takes a lot to embarrass me, but I was awfully embarrassed on one occasion when I had to go through a metal detector. This is something pretty standard at an airport, but for some reason, they flagged me to be searched.
I’m not really sure why they thought I was a threat, but they did. It’s funny to me that someone like me, who a good citizen and a mom, would be chosen to be screened, but I was. To make things worse, because of this search, I almost missed my flight.
It wasn’t the fault of the officers, and I am glad they are there. Instead, I had to endure a pat down by a woman, and my luggage was opened and sorted through by an older man. I saw him sift through my underwear with a stick as he went through things, and I thought I was going to die of shame. If I wanted to show a roomful of strangers my underwear, I could have thought of more interesting ways to do it. He sifted through, and of course, they didn’t find anything. By the time I had got through there and off to my gate, they had given my seat away. Luckily, there was another open.
No matter how embarrassing that was, the scanners are there for our protection. You usually have to go through them in the airport, and if you enter any type of government office or court you will probably have to go through that as well. I went through a detector this summer when I went to an amusement park, which really surprised me. However, I guess if that is what we have to go through for a little peace of mind, I’m not really going to complain about it too much.
Though the security technology is used for mainly high profile and public areas, there are times when you may run into them in unexpected places. These are there to keep you safe, even if you think they are a pain, and while it would be ideal to live in a world where they are not needed, this is probably not something that will happen any time soon. In fact, they are probably going to pop up in more and more places, and there isn’t much we can do about it. If you decide to accept that this is the way things are going to be, you are going to be a lot more easy going when you find you have to go through yet another security check.