Thousands Standing Around

After September 11, 2001, airports around the world found it necessary to tighten security measures; including placing very strict limits on the quantity of liquids or gels an individual may carry onto a flight. Long gone are the days of cosmetics cases, filled with jumbo bottles of your favorite shampoo and a lifetime supply of your signature scent. Now, nothing larger than 3 ounces in the US or 100 milliliters in the UK can be taken on board. Even if you buy nothing but the smallest bottles available, all of your collective liquids and gels have to fit inside a single quart sized bag. Before you start to visualize the mid-air Medusa you might become without all your favorite cosmetics, remember, you won't be on the plane forever; only for a little while.

You may only have a quart sized bag in which to fit these items, but some of the necessities, and that will vary greatly depending on the person, could be amongst the following; travel sized contact lens cleaner, travel sized toothpaste, toothbrush with cover, dental floss, facial cleansing and moisturizing cloths, travel sized shampoo, travel sized conditioner, travel sized hair styling product, antibacterial Hand Wipes, insect repellent towelettes, sun screen cloths, samples of cosmetics, powder foundation or bronzer, powdered blush, eyeliner and eye shadow, lip products with SPF included in the formula, solid deodorant, solid perfumes. Personally I would need a very small percentage of these items and equally would not expect to be able to get most of this list into one quart sized bag. However having been married for a little while now what is an impossibility to us males is a mere formality to the other half of the human race.

Also before meeting my wife my bathroom cabinet consisted of shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and shaving equipment. Even the regular sized items of that list could have fitted easily inside a quart sized bag. Well maybe not because my packing strategy was just to put everything into a bag, if it didn't fit then I probably didn't need it anyway. But I digress, there apparently is a strategy to fitting this list of essential cosmetics and toiletries into a small clear bag and if anyone can accomplish this feat then my wife certainly can. The problem then will arise on arriving at the security clearance desk long after you have checked in, handed over the majority of your bags and gone through what seems like dozens of security checks and x-ray machines. The human that wants to physically check the contents of this bag. Did you pack it yourself? Has it ever left your sight?

All the efforts to fill that bag now go up in smoke as this official wants to show their importance by emptying the entire contents out onto the desk in front of you (and incidentally all those lucky enough to be behind you in the ever increasingly long line), and now we get back to the all important sizing of the bottles. The obnoxious security person is only doing their job I hear you cry, but they say that contact lens cleaner is not a medicine or medicinal, so that goes out. So for the next 14 hours or so as you are hurtling across the ocean you cannot see anything due to your being legally blind, as you prise the last of your few remaining items not to be confiscated back into the bag they inform you that if you need contact lens cleaner you can buy some at the duty free shopping plaza they have just finished building as you wait the rest of this day for your flight to be called due to your having to arrive so early to get through the formalities required to clear an airport.