Through TSA

Twice last week I made my way through airport security. TSA workers have my sympathy. They never know who is coming through their checkpoints. And though they filter through lots of innocents to find a few offenders, they can’t become complacent.

Before my first flight last week, I wove along the queue line ropes, watching an officer at the entry to security. I could see myself in her. Narrowed eyes, attention that snapped toward small sounds, heavy sighs, and clipped answers—all this could have been me, especially at the end of a long middle school day.

Those days wore me down—seven periods of asking kids to put their phones away and explaining that point of view is the writer’s way of deciding who is telling the story to whom and answering the same questions about when the midterm would be and what would be on it and what would happen if they just happened to be absent that day.

On those days, my face would feel as tight as the as the officer at the checkpoint.

With just five people ahead of me, she slammed a passport onto her desk.

“Pour your water out!” she shouted to the line. “All day folks have been trying to smuggle in their last inches of water.”

Her voice turned to a mutter. “I say it and say it.”

And I understood.

I don’t know when I started catching myself—realizing that seventh period deserved my patience as much as the morning classes, that seventh period hadn’t heard the words I said to first period and second and third, the words I had been saying all afternoon.

But I hope I became more like the security officer on my return flight. She was crisp and efficient. But her face was open to me and her smile contagious.

“Trouble with your luggage, ma’am,” she said. “Could you come with me?”

And though I’d heard the word trouble, I didn’t mind following.

“Let’s work this out,” she said, as she zipped open my bag, “and get you on your way.”

It was no problem, only a mirror, one that’s cleared security for over a decade. She handed back my bag.

“There you go,” she said.

And at the end of what must have been a long day, she sent me off with a smile, one that didn’t seem conjured up.

I somehow felt I mattered.