Please Remove Your Shoes

I write this now as I sit in the Milwaukee General Mitchell airport waiting for my plane to Minneapolis. The pleasant smooth jazz hums in and out of my ears. The backlit news shop sign is soft white and all the magazines are right side up on the shelves. An older man at a shoeshine station waits patiently for customers in the dead of the day. "Howdy," he says. "Hi," I nod my head. "How you doin' today?" he says. "Fine," I say. "Alright," he says. My gate is sparsely populated with fellow travelers each absorbed in a book or an iPod or a dream. It is a Norman Rockwell poster picture of American travel, but at what cost?

Normally when I come to the airport the lines are worse than the DMV. If I have to check in a bag (for a nominal $15 first-bag charge), I first have to wait behind a long line of disgruntled fliers arguing about checking fees or previous trips or other baggage they may be carrying. When I arrive at security it gets worse. The long lines turn to angry crowds as passengers from multiple airlines funnel through a single checkpoint shoeless and impatient. I tread warily hoping the thousands of feet before me didn't belong to a person with hoof and mouth disease. After taking out my laptop and putting it in its own container since an x-ray machine can't read it if my recently removed shoes share some empty space in the same plastic tray, I cross my fingers and wait to get waived through the metal detector. Shoes on, laptop back in case, and I'm off. I arrive at the last gate and scramble for my boarding pass just as the door is closing. Okay, I may have exaggerated this last bit-I usually arrive hours before boarding since I have no idea how long this whole process will take and end up sitting at the gate for an hour or two praying the flight isn't delayed.

After 9/11 things changed. Shoes came off. Tolerance hit new lows and alerts hit new highs. Water bottles were banned along with any usable amount of suntan lotion, toothpaste, contact solution, massage oils (only for those special occasion trips), and the like. A wave of fear dominated travel and its ripples are still effectually killing the airline business.

Fear. This is the price I pay to feel safe. It makes sense to have precautions just in case a terrorist is on our plane. Just in case someone wants to blow up a couple Midwesterners traveling from Minneapolis to Milwaukee to visit their family for Thanksgiving. It makes sense to have these precautions just in case someone holds a plane hostage with a nail that could fit in a shoe. But it makes sense. Just in case someone brings a deadly explosive in a sealed water bottle the size of a baby's foot, it makes sense.

Safety. This is the product I get for the price I pay. I sacrifice comfort and convenience so that I can be sure my plane won't be hijacked. I sacrifice time and money so that I won't have to clutch my head between my knees hoping Harrison Ford is on my plane to kick some bad-guy butt. I sacrifice toothpaste and massage oils so that I won't have to pray for Samuel L. Jackson to be there killing some highly venomous snakes that could decimate a cabin full of harmless passengers. It's almost ten years since that one event and I have yet to be on a plane that's been hijacked, and that's a good thing. At least all the trials and tribulations I go through before boarding a plane give me some piece of mind that I'll be safe in my travels. And those trials and tribulations have worked! Hallelujah! I have yet to be on a plane that's been hijacked.

By now my point is abundantly clear. The price of fear is ridiculous. I may feel safe in my travels, but at what cost and at what sacrifice? I understand that times are different now than they once were, but still; does it really make sense to spend the time and money going through this ritual practice of safety precautions to get from point A to point B? I worry enough about things already. I feel like I'm living a real life Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. We laugh at Larry David's paranoia when it's flickering on the TV, but when it drives our subconscious we let it slide. I don't know when the ridiculous ritual will end, but I can't wait for the day that I can walk through a metal detector with something between the skin of my foot and the dirty floor beneath it.