Monday, December 9, 2013

this is not a dream

An agent greeted me at the entrance to the Denver Airport security checkpoint this morning and pointed to a screen that said RANDOMIZER. He said, "Touch this screen."

I touched the screen, and the word RIGHT appeared. The agent directed me to the right-hand lane. The agent manning the right-hand lane was waiting to swab my palms with a Band-aid-shaped paper strip. He fed the strip into a MORPHO machine, waited for a few seconds, and analyzed the result when the machine spit it back out. Then I put my bags on the conveyor belt. I was instructed to take off my jacket and leave everything else on. I could leave my shoes on and my liquids in. I walked through the metal detector, grabbed my jacket and my bags at the exit of the x-ray machine and kept walking.

The whole process, from touching the RANDOMIZER to retrieving my stuff on the other side of the conveyor belt, took no more than a minute. When they started swabbing me I thought the RANDOMIZER had given me the short end of the stick, but when I looked back at the long left-hand lane I realized I'd hit the jackpot. Thank you RANDOMIZER. I enjoyed leaving my boots on.