vailian

Yesterday John and CC and I flew back to Minneapolis from my sister's house in Seattle.
It was hard to leave Seattle-- the sun had come out and the lawns were gleaming.
Got to the airport 2 hours early (I hate panicking in the airport) but found that the flight was going to be delayed by an hour. What to do? We had already gone through the security scans (belt off, laptop out, remove shoes, show liquids... who could have imagined this a few years ago??), rode the cute little train on the loop to the gate-- the amount of entertainment at the gate was very limited for an energetic 10-year-old girl.
She pleads with me to go back to the main gate areas to look for a present for her sister in Germany.
So we left the luggage with John at the gate and got back on the little train and up one flight of stairs to the main terminal gates. I ordered a quick coffee, and then looked around, and said, "You know, I think we are on the Wrong Side of the Security Gates."
So we started walking back out the way we came, and were immediately surrounded by a bunch of Big Security Guards. I expleained that we had just come out 2 minutes earlier and were trying to get back to our gate.
"You will have to go through Security again."
Oh Drat! I exclaimed, and so we trudged down the long corridor to the security belts. Fortuntely, I thought, we didn't have all the luggage to put through the scanner.
"Where are your boarding passes?" they asked. "At the gate with my son," I explained.
"You will have to have new passes issued by the airline."
So (slightly nervous now) we headed back to the ticket office... the woman takes pity on us and gives us new boarding passes... I think we now have the worst behind us but I hadn't reckoned with the slow stupidity of the security supervisor.
"Where is your passport?"
"Like I keep saying, about a hundred yards from here with my son at the flight gate"
He didn't want to accept my German public library card as proof of ID.
"I will have to call in on this," he said, and VERY SLOWLY called some bombproof bunker far underground in Virginia.
It turns out that the US Government has no records for me (mostly because I have lived abroad for over 30 years, probably). I do not exist.
I plead with him. "Can you come with us to the gate, my documents are all there? Please? Or page my son in the terminal?"
"No, we have started this identity check now and we have to carry it through. You don't have any ID".
"Can't my daughter go through and have John bring the passports back?"
He thinks for a LONG time (the clock is ticking, and the plane is due to board in 15 miutes).
"Do you think she can manage on her own?" He looks at her, she is 10 and speaks very little English.
"Sure!" I say, but I am not sure at all. This involves getting through the luggage check, finding the little train and getting off at the right stop, even though the labeling is only in English and japanese.
"Sure!" she pipes up, although she is not sure either.
And off she trots, braving the security gates all by herself, disappearing into the bowels of the airport. The Stupid Security Supe says to me, "Stand just there where I can see you!"
The plane is scheduled to take off at 4:25; it is now 3:40. Can they make it?
And I wait, and wait, and WAIT. It is 4:15 before John and CC appear, racing down the hall, loaded with all the luggage. John is cursing (he has exams he cannot miss the next morning-- missing this plane would spell disaster for him) and we sweat through the sec checks for what seems the 100th time this morning, race to the little train, run up 50 stairs with heavy bags (lucky I have training in stairclimbing from my apartment in cologne), get to the gate just as the last passengers are going through.
"We have made it!" I triumph, but too soon, because my boarding pass now has a red mark on it: because of the identity check, I have to be pulled out for an Extra Special Security Check, which involves escorting me and my luggage and CC down to the Interrogation Dungeon and no fewer than 5 husky "experts" give me the most thorough examination I have ever had.
NOT fun, and CC keeps asking me if the plane is going to leave without us.