Quote:
Originally Posted by AOII Angel
After 9/11, I had to travel to San Fran for the American College of Surgeons Convention with two colleagues, one from Bahrain and one from Afghanistan. We told them to stay with us (white americans) at all times. We didn't want them to look suspicious! Who ended up getting flagged at security...both ways? Me, the giggly blonde. I thought it was hilarious.
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Last summer, on a flight from NY to Amsterdam, we were the lucky ones selected for additional screening, including our two-year old son. I wasn't even allowed to stay with him while they "searched" him (had to stay 15 feet away from him or so). I was a bit annoyed until my husband, rightfully, pointed out that if they don't do that it's just a matter of time before a crazy fundamentalist idiot uses a child (his own or someone else's) to carry explosives onto a plane. Sad but probably true!
The security guy who checked my son managed to turn it into a big adventure for him anyway. He told him to pretend he was an airplane (one of his favorite words he had picked up in America that summer) and gave him a high five (which he had just learned to do) so I don't think he's scarred for life or anything like that.
Also, I fly from Amsterdam to the US regularly and I am glad they have finally "upped" security measures there... I have heard too many stories of people who - unintentionally - ended up on planes with things like bottles of water and pocket knifes that officially should have been taken from them. Not saying that Amsterdam is the only airport where that happens, it's just that it's the airport I am most familiar with. This event (and the fact that the guy who managed to wrestle the Nigerian guy down was Dutch) made for most of the headlines over the past week here so let's hope it was a wake up call. A lot of people think that "stuff like that doesn't happen here," which is slightly naive, I suppose.
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