Airport Fun

I just remembered that I wanted to share my airport story from my St. Louis trip.

This was the first trip where I decided to just use a carry-on and not check my luggage. After seeing many people struggle on other flights, I was a little nervous about getting on early enough to make sure there was enough room for my luggage in the overhead bins. Leaving St. Louis, I was in "group 6" to board. I decided I would just go in with "group 5". I don't think they would have stopped me... but unfortunately my seat was “flagged” to be searched.

What irritated me most about this was they didn’t tell me what was going on. They just asked me to stand off to the side while one of the guys started typing at the computer. I then hear him pick up the radio and call for a female inspector to come to the gate. I’m thinking, “Surely that can’t be for me”. He turns to me and asks me to have a seat and says the problem is “because my boarding pass was torn a little bit in the corner”, not mentioning the inspector at all.

So, I wait… and someone else asks me if I’m waiting on the inspector. I said, “I have no idea what I’m waiting for, he didn’t tell me”. She then tells me that yes, my seat was “randomly flagged” to be searched. Now I’m thinking... “Was it random or was it because my boarding pass was torn? Or… which one of you is trying to break the news gently”.

The inspector arrives and proceeds to thoroughly search my luggage and me. Luckily for me, one of those small-town bars had given us souvenir condoms, which I had in my purse!! Yep. The inspector, of course, did not say anything, however it was not the highlight of the search process for me!!?? :-)

I was the absolute last person on the plane... in fact the gate people had to rush the inspector a little bit to get me on the plane in time. I could not believe my luck! Thankfully the passenger sitting next to me was very observant and knew which overhead bin (which were by now all closed) had some space in it. I would have been really ticked if I had had to check my bag because of all that.