“Hope for the Best. Expect the worst.”
I think Mel Brooks helped make those words famous. Or maybe it was the person, who typed them up on small pieces of white paper, and stuck them into fortune cookies. Either way the idiom often becomes my mantra when traveling with children.
I just survived a 10,000-mile journey to and from Hawaii with my young daughter, and yes, I hoped for the best, but expected the worst. Shockingly, things went fairly smoothly… unlike past trips. Despite two delayed flights and a few shoulder blows courtesy of the guy sitting behind me, who insisted on packing free weights in his oversized carry-on yet struggled to hoist it into the overhead bin, we got to and from my parent’s home in one piece.
Ask my 5-year-old what her worst part of the trip was and she won’t hesitate to share her answer: “Taking my shoes off!”
Translation: Going through airport security.
Navigating your way through airport security is no picnic when you are traveling alone, but throw in a kid or two, and the requirement is akin to a passage through perdition.
Though, after hearing what the Thomas family from Philadelphia endured during their trip to Florida last year, I have new admiration for parents traveling with kids and increased disdain for some members of the Transportation Security Administration.
Last March, Bob Thomas, his wife, Leona, and son, Ryan were flying out of Philly to Disney World in Orlando to celebrate Ryan’s fourth birthday.
According to Thomas, it was Ryan’s first commercial flight and he couldn’t have been more excited. The boy, who was born 16 weeks premature, suffers from malformed ankles and low muscle tone in his legs. Consequently, Ryan wears leg braces to get around.
Unfortunately, Ryan’s leg braces set off alarms when he walked through the metal detector at an airport security checkpoint.
I wasn’t shocked to hear that, but what continues to baffle me is what transpired after the boy set off the security alarms.
Ryan’s dad told news reporters that instead of discreetly pulling Ryan aside, the TSA screener told the boy to take off his braces in the middle of the screening area.
Did I mention that Ryan was 4 years old at the time? Four years old!
The Thomases told reporters they were dumbfounded.
“I told them he can’t walk without them on his own,” Bob Thomas said. “He said, ‘He’ll need to take them off.’ ”
At that point Ryan’s mom offered to walk her son through the detector after removing the boy’s metal and plastic braces.
The security screener reportedly demanded that Ryan walk through the metal detector by himself without his leg braces, much to his parents’ chagrin.
Long story short, a furious Thomas filed a grievance, and nearly a year later he finally got a response from a TSA security director. The big wig’s response to the irate dad: Per TSA policy, the airport screener should have escorted the family to a private screening area where Ryan could have been swabbed for traces of explosive materials.
That’s it. No apology, just a canned regurgitation of TSA policy, which by the way, wasn’t followed.
The incident has since made national headlines with many calling the TSA’s move “overkill” and “stupid.”
What would you call it?
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