kartooner

When we left Cal­i­for­nia in Jan­u­ary to embark on the jour­ney home we never expected that a rou­tine air­port secu­rity check would turn into utter chaos. Yet there we were; my wife, daugh­ter and I sub­jected to the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s “rou­tine” pro­ce­dures includ­ing putting my wife on file as a poten­tial ter­ror­ist and all because of our daughter’s car seat.

Rewind time about one week before when my father and brother invited me to shoot a few firearms in the Owens Val­ley. It wouldn’t have been my first time but after talk­ing with my wife she revealed to me that she had never shot a gun before and was curi­ous. Being the good hus­band that I am, I decided that I’d stay home with our daugh­ter while she went out with my fam­ily. A few hours later they (my father and brother) tell me that Franch­esca not only knocked down sev­eral tar­gets but that she man­aged to do bet­ter than every­one else. Some­how it didn’t sur­prise me because my wife is metic­u­lous about every­thing she does and not only that she usu­ally per­forms tasks in a stel­lar fashion.

Flash for­ward sev­eral days later. My wife, daugh­ter and I are com­pletely drained from the pre­vi­ous day’s events which included of all things to do before you go on a 6-hour flight, Dis­ney­land. We’ve piled every­thing under our arms; a car seat, fold­ing stroller, four pieces of carry on lug­gage and a tod­dler. As we approach the secu­rity area, a gen­tle­man in uni­form politely asks us to place our belong­ings in plas­tic con­tain­ers includ­ing our jack­ets and shoes. Every­thing is rolling along smoothly until the carseat sets off the alarm on the explo­sives scan­ner. We aren’t noti­fied of this “tiny” prob­lem until we’re approached on the other side of the medal detec­tors. Appar­ently the scan­ner picked up on an explo­sive residue on the under­side of the carseat. My wife and I just stand there motion­less, try­ing to com­pre­hend the sit­u­a­tion at hand. “Explo­sives?”, my wife exclaims. “I don’t understand.”

The secu­rity per­son explains, “We found, or rather, the machine found an explo­sive residue on your carseat. Do either of you work at or near a com­pany that man­u­fac­tur­ers explo­sives?”. It’s right at this moment that I wanted to take a step back and won­der if we were vic­tims of a prac­ti­cal joke. Explo­sives? The only explo­sives that I come in con­tact with are fake and usu­ally come in the form of video games. My wife stands there pon­der­ing the sit­u­a­tion and then real­izes that it might have been when she went shoot­ing a week before.

“Yeah.”, the secu­rity per­son con­tin­ued, “Gun­pow­der is a highly sticky sub­stance and it can stay on cloth­ing and skin for a few weeks after you’ve come in con­tact with it.” That being the case my wife was padded down and Zoe, our 1-year old daugh­ter, was scanned for any addi­tional explo­sives, just in case we were smug­gling them in that is.