Leave your nun-chucks at home when flying....

I've had the opportunity to read some rants about the TSA in the past, but after many trips I haven't encountered any issues with them. And it isn't as if I am a model flier, I have on more than one occasion been as drunk as can be yet still made it through the TSA and the airline folk. Hell, once on a drunken bender Ryan and I weaseled our way into a first class upgrade where they kept the gin flowing like water! Anyway, I'm getting of course, so here is my TSA rant. I hope this doesn't get me black listed and result in guaranteed cavity searches. As mentioned before, I have never had any real issues with the TSA, Southwest Airlines is a whole other issue though, do they really have a black list?

I was flying out the December 26^th 2008 to go see my girlfriend, who was visiting her sister and her three kids in Hopkinsville, Kentucky(also known as H-town). I did not ship my gifts but rather had them in my carry on. At the x-ray point in the flying process the TSA agent saw something that picqued his interest. He asked me if I had a hand blender in the bag. I was shocked because although expecting him to ask me about something, I did not expect him to ask that. I expected: 'Sir, do you have a pair of nun-chucks in your bag?' Which I would have answered yes to.

You see, I was carrying a pair of those foam nun-chucks for kids. It was a gift for my girlfriend's nephew. So I answered “Noooooo” with a confused look on my face. Then immediately I thought about the nun-chucks and should I bring them up now, or wait for them to tear apart my bag only to find them while looking for a hand blender. The latter would make me look very suspect I thought, so I followed my 'No' with a 'Oh yeah, there is a pair of nun-chucks in there'.

Shockingly, this did not catch him off guard. He was so focused on the blender like object, and when a fellow TSA colleague(supervisor of sorts, so it seemed) came by, the first agent pointed out the hand-blender looking device to his superior, at which point the superior seemed to ignore him, point to the screen and say(with a confused/shocked look on his face) “What about those nun-chucks?!?!”

It was right around this point when I figured out what the hand blender object was; it was a milk frother(woot off) that was a gift to my gf's sister. I proceeded to state this, but at this point the nun-chucks were the new focus. In comes TSA agent #3.

After TSA agent #3 sifts through my bag, looks at my external 2.5 “ hard drive in confusion, he says holding up the wrapped nun-chucks: “I am going to open this.” Not sure if that was a call for an objection, but I just said “Go right ahead.”

He opened the nun-chucks and then somehow involved two other TSA agents(TSA agents 1 & 2 were done with me and focusing back on their original duties). Together the three of them passed the nun-chucks around, looked at each other for someone to make the call, then decided that this decision was out of their pay grade. They then took the nun-chucks to a head supervisor that seemed to be in charge of the whole show. While the four of them were huddling around these nun-chucks whispering lord knows what, I said “Listen, they only cost 5 dollars, if there is any issue with them, no big deal.” They seemed to not hear this and continued pensively whispering. Finally, one of the agents came back to me and said I could not bring them on. So be it.

I would have put them in my checked bag from the get-go if I had one, just to avoid any potential issues, but I did not check a bag for this trip. So I carried them on, and got a good laugh out of it. The part that really got me was that I stored the coffee frother and the nun-chucks right next to each other. In the same pouch. Which means while the guy was trying to figure out what the blender-like device was, the nun-chucks were right next to the frother.

Like I said, not knocking the TSA in general, they never seem to bug me much. But this time they seemed to have dropped the ball. All and all, though, I commend their work.