Recently an airport security guy confiscated my 4 ounce shampoo container because he said the maximum allowed is 3 ounces. I pointed to the airport’s own sign that says 4 ounces is allowed, but that didn’t seem like a good argument to him. It was too late to check my bags, so he confiscated my mostly empty 4 ounce container.
But here’s the interesting part. The container is semi-transparent, and contained obviously less than 1 ounce of liquid. Apparently the empty portion of the container posed a threat. Or to put it another way, as we humorists like to do, the airport confiscated my 3 ounces of nothing so that I couldn’t use that nothing to blow up the plane.
What they didn’t seem to realize is that my carry on bag was not entirely full either. There was a whole bunch of nothing in there along with the clothes and shoes and belt. And if I were to combine my bag of nothing with the nothing that other passengers smuggled aboard, that would make a huge stockpile of lethal nothing.
For a fleeting moment I considered reasoning with the TSA guy. Surely he could see that the liquid part of my container was minimal. But one look in his eyes told me that thinking wasn’t his sport. And on some level I have to agree that we shouldn’t let airport security use too much of their own judgment. Sooner or later some security person would allow a hand grenade on a plane because the passenger “didn’t look angry.”
I wanted to point out that the Ziploc bag itself is a container larger than 3 ounces, and that’s also mostly full of dangerous air. Or perhaps I could have argued that once the airplane doors are closed, the cabin is essentially a huge container with plenty of gels and liquids and dangerous nothingness. I would have been a beacon of common sense and righteousness, right up until they started beating me with batons.
I was also concerned that they might go all Sherlock Holmes on me and ask why a guy with virtually no hair needs shampoo. I would probably say something like “Have you heard of phantom limb?” And then I’d have a metal detector so far up my ass that my fillings would set it off.
Anyway, I just took a shower using the shampoo the hotel provides. I don’t know what goes into hotel shampoo, but I always assume the worst. In this case I’m guessing green apples and the lard of bad tippers. Today is the day when I am most likely to hear the phrase “You smell like a cider whore.”