I did a dumb thing this morning. I checked in on line for my flight. That’s not the dumb thing. Usually checking in online is smart. You get to avoid long lines because you have your boarding pass and such. But during the check-in process I was asked Will you be carrying on anything that can cut - ANYTHING?
So I thought for a bit and remembered that my favorite little scissors were in my little sock bag.
Now, according to the rules, they are small enough to be OK. But the website promises dire consequences if I didn’t declare some cutty thing and tried to take it through Security. Things like $1,000,000,000,000 in fines and the rest of my life in jail and confiscation of my firstborn male child and stuff like that. Because lying about cutty things is against the law!
Well… Maybe I exaggerate a tiny bit.
So what would you have done, gentle reader? I debated with myself. But I’m generally a law abiding citizen, so I admitted that I had something that could cut other things, and I planned to bring it on board the plane. I pushed the continue button.
Bells rang and lights flashes and a black helicopter hovered over my house and armed security guards circled the neighborhood and started evacuating my neighbors.
OK… Not really.
But it did give me a boarding pass that said Not valid for security. See a customer service agent.
And that is why I had to abandon the planned blog post about the Portland Knit & Crochet Show and instead speed off to the airport so that I could convince the powers that be that I, and my cute little leopard print scizzors - the one with the bling from The Loopy Ewe on it - was not a threat.
Hopefully I can get it done in the next couple of days, although I am finding blogging on my iPhone to be slow going.
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Those scissors are meant for cutting *yarn*, which isn’t a thing, it’s an obsession. So you wouldn’t have been lying in any way if you’d said “no things that can cut other things”. At least, that’s the way I would have rationalized it
1Remark from Kathy — Monday, 9/22/2008 @ 7:23 PM
Goodness, I’d have to claim my teeth.
And my fingernails.
And my sarcasm.
What will they think of next?!
2Remark from Kerin — Tuesday, 9/23/2008 @ 12:28 AM
(sigh)
3It’s just too much…
(((hugs)))
Remark from Knitnana — Tuesday, 9/23/2008 @ 7:14 AM
That is an interesting thing to know about since I will be flying off to a stitching retreat next month.
I wonder if it is airline specific…
4Remark from Bonnie H. — Tuesday, 9/23/2008 @ 7:14 AM
I love the above posts about cutting sarcasm. I have found that the airport folks do not appreciate sarcasm and cutting humor would be too much for them.
5Once when I was getting our boarding passes online, my husband’s printed out fine but I was told to check in at the counter. I interpreted this to mean that I would be a “random” passenger selected for extra screening. So we got there extra early and I was correct - there I was with people who had brought on expressed breast milk, bought their tickets the day before and purchased a one way ticket. It all took quite a while. One woman actually missed her plane because of it - and they really didn’t care!
Remark from pat — Tuesday, 9/23/2008 @ 2:30 PM
I fly all the time. I very rarely do the website check-in because I fly out from a very small airport so there’s not ever a big line. But I chuck a box of dental floss in my carry-on and never let the idea the little metal piece on it that cuts the floss is actually a cutting edge cross my mind. I just let my mind go blank and walk on through security. No problems except for the forty-eleven other people who sit near me in the waiting area, asking why I was able to get my sock needles through. I’ve never, ever been stopped for knitting needles although they did take a favorite, dear pair of those tiny blunt supposedly-airline-approved scissors I’d received as a gift from me. I made the TSA lady promise to keep them instead of tossing them since they were silver. And they freaked out over one of those tiny booklights once. (I do mean freaked. They made me stand behind a partition thing while the bomb-dog sniffed my carry on. Never again, ho boy). I no longer carry anything I love with me. Website or not, TSA may take whatever it wants. I always put a lifeline in my knitting prior to going through just in case the TSA person that day is in a foul, unforgiving, confiscating mood and have a book or iPod book ready for back-up.
6Remark from deidra — Wednesday, 9/24/2008 @ 12:21 PM
*snort* cutting sarcasm. Kerin you’re brilliant.
As a girl who was taught NEVER to lie, it took many, many years to learn to forget stuff. Or maybe I’m just middle aged….
7Remark from Shelly — Friday, 9/26/2008 @ 8:12 AM
Wow, that’s really ridiculous!
8Good luck!
Remark from MindExplosion — Saturday, 9/27/2008 @ 6:13 AM
Flying back from England, my carry-on with a large(ish) amount of knitting and TSA “approved” circulars was scrupulously gone through and finally approved for ‘boarding’. During the flight, I can see up the aisle, this flash of something coming out from one of the rows. So later in my ‘trying to prevent a blood clot’ stroll, I happen upon a young woman knitting with the biggest freakin’ metal knitting needles! I mean she was “hitting” people as they walked the aisle, they were so long! She could have pole vaulted with them. She could have skewered a couple passengers at once, they were so long. ….well you get my drift. I asked her how she got them on. She told me (with some surprise that I’d even ask)that they didn’t even bat an eye! Just “waved” her through, essentially. Man, the inconsistency of TSA’s power trip.
9Remark from mel — Tuesday, 9/30/2008 @ 9:26 AM