Monday, December 28, 2009

Well it happened again.
In the midst of a less than dazzling holiday season—drizzly and dreary here in Orlando—some nut tried to blow himself up on a Northwest flight that was about to land in Detroit.

A moment of terror averted, but traveling, already a mess, becomes a shrink’s wet dream for drumming up new business. This time Al Qaeda used a rich Muslim kid who was bored, depressed and looking around for friends and a thrill.

Why not blow up a plane and kill everyone on board?

He got through security in Amsterdam by sewing a bomb into his crotch. Now the rest of us are stuck in longer lines, checkpoints, pat downs, and endless restrictions:

Are they kidding that we can't go to the bathroom an hour before we land, even if someone is having an emergency? And what if we're cold, and we got 55 minutes to go without a blanket or pillow to support an aching neck.

Some people applaud the new rules.

I shudder at the future.

Reality’s getting worse than The Exorcist—the film that forced me into the lobby for a full forty-five minutes just to keep my sanity—or what’s left of it.

So I’m thinking. Is everything far away worth seeing? There’s gotta be good things closer to home.

How about those box stores that begged us to buy this past Thanksgiving, yet we barely gave them a second glance?

Or visiting friends and relatives you might not be crazy about, but even they wouldn't think of scanning your body and strapping you into a seat.

We got Disney too in our own backyard.

Disney… To an Orlandoan?

Yes, those lines that queue to the great plains of Kansas are starting to look quaint, even fun, though not exactly the warm fuzzy feeling I want to experience blowing up a bomb in a terrorist's crotch.

No comments:

Post a Comment