I'll Show You Mine, You Show Me Yours

You know the enhanced airport security has had a cultural impact when inquisitive kids who used to play "doctor" are now playing "TSA screener."

Since de-shoeing and pat downs are responses to previous threats -- the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber -- I hate to think what's next when authorities capture a terrorist with a bomb in a body cavity.

All this public groping brought to mind when I was a preteen back in the Stone Age. A right of passage was getting your first Big Boy suit. Dad trotted you off to Roebacker's, the only men's store in town, where you got to pick from five choices in blue gabardine.

There was no such thing as "youth fashion" in those days. It was a time when waistbands actually went around your waist, your mother sewed up any clothes that had holes in them and you only wore sneakers to play basketball.

As we got closer to the big day, the older boys began gibing us because they knew Ol' Man Roebacker made it a practice of grabbing the young men's crotches while he was fitting their inseam. Every teenage boy in town knew about it and laughed it off. We had no idea what a pedophile was and even if we did I'm not sure this was anything more than a old guy's idea of locker room high jinks. (Of course that was then and this is now.)

Anyway, the airport pat down is the first time since I got my Big Boy suit another man who isn't wearing a stethoscope will have gotten his hand that close to my, what evidently is being called, "junk."

The Transportation Security Administration says its looking for ways to ease travelers' consternation. Here're a couple of ideas for it to noodle around.

Sure it's embarrassing to stand in front of a camera while an anonymous phantom gets a private peep show -- and without even putting a quarter in the slot. How about this instead? The agent/voyeur is also rendered virtually naked and you get to see him or her too. Now it's more like a gym locker room. We've all done that. I think that's a reasonable compromise.

Another way to make passengers less apprehensive is to give them a choice of pat down screeners dressed as people who, at one time, may have had a passing acquaintance with their various private body parts. Kind of "better the devil you know."

For instance, TSA could costume agents as gynecologists, hookers, Uncle Larry, seamstresses, personal trainers, cellmates, tattooists, body painters, priests, massage therapists and creeps who picked you up when you were hitchhiking at 14.

I know I'd feel better if one is dressed as an elderly haberdasher.