About a year or so after 9-11, I was traveling to Los
Angeles during the Christmas break with my eight-year- old son. We had friends
who had an empty house in Glendora, which is one of the small satellite
communities around Los Angeles proper, and they had given us an open invitation
to come on down anytime at all. We were due a fun holiday somewhere warm. I thought,
what better place to visit than America’s sunny southern California, the home
of theme parks, movie studios and miles and miles of sandy beaches?
So there we were; enroute to LAX on a late morning flight,
via JFK airport in Newark. When we showed up at the airport in Halifax, where
the first leg of our journey began, the ticket agent told us that both airports
we were scheduled to visit that day were on high alert because of some
terrorist threat, so we were counselled to expect delays and extra vigilance on
behalf of staff.
I nodded politely to the agent and promptly forgot about it.
I should mention it was the second time my son had flown. The
first was when I was pregnant with his sister and we were headed back east together
from Ottawa to visit his Nanna. For the record, that had been my first flight
as well. He was then a little tyke, almost three years old. Once we were
comfortably seated, he turned to face me; his chocolate brown eyes wide open as
the plane took off. He said, “Scary plane, Mom?”
This time around, he didn’t feel the need to ask any
questions like that. He was Cool Hand Luke, all over again. I had given him
permission to take one of his stuffed animals with him and he had appropriately
chosen a fluffy white bear with a long, knitted red scarf around its neck. He
called it Canada Bear. My son, the foreign relations expert. There was even a
maple leaf on his luggage tag. His idea, not mine.
When we landed in Newark about an hour-and-half later, we
had a rather long layover scheduled in; about three or four hours long. But,
before we had time to eat and rest, we had to go through American Immigration
and Customs, as this was our port of entry to the U.S.
Line-ups were incredibly long. I had made the mistake of
booking a flight around the time when most of the students in North America
were going home from their respective colleges and universities. If we were
going to take advantage of my son’s school break, however, it was the only way
to go. But nothing could have prepared me for the line-ups I saw there that day.
I did a head count and some of them had almost two hundred people. So we slowly
walked through two different queues for about a half hour apiece. It was tedious,
to say the least.
Once we got to the head of the second line, the young officer
there didn’t have very much to say. He did have what appeared to be a permanent
frown and, I think, a Slavic accent. At
one point, he looked me up and down, slowly, several times. It was most
discomfiting. I almost told him about the cookies I had stolen when I was four
years old; just to get him to stop staring at me with those pale blue eyes of
his. I felt like a scuba diver surrounded by sharks. Suffice to say he made me
really nervous. My son’s teddy bear seemed to bring him out of his strange
demeanor however, and he spoke respectfully to him – my son, not the bear - as
he passed his furry white companion through the scanner.
Once we cleared Immigration, next was Customs, where another
long line-up awaited us. Except this time, we had to pull our luggage behind us
as well. And Canada Bear was riding on top of it all, grinning mischievously to
everyone, including us.
The line was barely moving. I looked ahead to see what was
delaying us and saw another officer, a tall, broad shouldered African American man,
dressed in an official looking uniform. He had - what I assumed at this point was
standard dress code for that airport - a frown on his face. I can tell you, he
looked foreboding. I swallowed hard. I hadn’t enjoyed being silently grilled by
the last guy and I sure wasn’t looking forward to meeting this dude.
After what seemed like forever, we finally reached him and I
handed over my boarding pass as well as the document the Immigration officer
had given me, trying hard to look what I thought appeared innocent. He looked
at the papers and then looked at me. Twice. By then I was perspiring heavily
and he hadn’t even said anything yet.
I wondered if it was something they were taught – How to
intimidate potential threats to America by giving them the silent treatment. Or
maybe they could actually read our minds. Well, not read our minds literally,
but figure out if we were gonna be trouble by reading some subtle, unspoken
signals only they could read. I’d heard of stranger things. That must be it, I
thought, and my heart began to beat a little bit faster.
Oh crap, I thought, what to do now? Was my face flushed? Was I licking my lips too
much? Breathe, girl, breathe!! My mind raced. This was bound to be bad, the way
things were going and all I could think about was, would they be gentle when
they strip searched me? Surely they’d consider the fact I had a little boy, an
innocent child, with me.
Then he spoke and I nearly wet my pants as it jarred me back
into reality.
“Where’s the third person in your party?”
“Wha....?” I stuttered like an idiot. A desperate idiot. And that’s when I did something really stupid -
That’s when I made an adrenaline charged lunge for the documents, claiming I wanted
to see where it said there were three people in our party. I did not think
about the fact that this guy was easily two times my weight and a good foot-and-a-half
taller than me. Not to mention he probably had a semi-automatic firearm on a
holster slung across his chest, under his uniform jacket, ready to use at a
moment’s notice.
As this scene unfolded in slow motion, just as if my mind
were in a parallel universe, I experienced visions of being thrown in jail and having
to be bailed out by some sympathetic American democratic pacifist – they did
fly, didn’t they? - after having missed our connecting flight, all on account
of some guy - correction; two guys - who thought I seemed suspicious. My mind
raced through the many permutations and possible outcomes of the situation,
while my son hung onto my hand, smiling happily at the officer, oblivious to
what was going on.
And it all happened in about two or three seconds. But, to
me, it seemed like an eternity. Crazy.
I even remember this fine specimen of JFKs Homeland Security
smelled like cheap cologne and some kind of breath mint. Wintergreen, I think.
Then he let out a deep chuckle and his eyes crinkled up at
the corners.
“Go on,” he said, motioning us through with his big meaty
hand.
How do you spell relief?
O-H-W-O-W-H-E-W-A-S-J-U-S-T-K-I-D-D-I-N-G!!
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