On our trip without the kids the hubby and I were in St. Louis and decided to take the tour of the Arch. During the tour, guests get to travel all the way to the top of the arch and see the city from a birds eye view. It’s a really great way to see St. Louis.
The first part of this adventure meant going through security. This is normally never a problem for us.
We follow Jesus. We try to do what’s right. We have nothing to hide.
We went through security like normal. I put my behemoth of a purse in the plastic container to be scanned through the X-ray machine.
My purse isn’t just a normal purse. It’s a purse/diaper bag/camera bag/dumping ground for all sorts of junk. In this picture, I left a standard-size coffee mug on the side for a size comparison.
My giant purse went through the scanner but before I could pick it up at the other end, the security guards took it back and scanned it again.
The two guards looked at my purse through the X-ray machine for what seemed to be a long time. Then they called in a third guard to take a look at the screen.
That’s when I knew something was up.
At this point I’m chuckling to myself thinking what could they be looking at? The most dangerous thing I could have in there is a messy diaper.
Then one of the guards asked me to come to a separate area and started questioning me.
{Gulp} Now I’m getting nervous.
I know I didn’t put anything dangerous in there, but what if someone on the street slipped something in there?
The questioning went like this:
Guard: “Is this your purse?”
Me: “Yes”
Guard: “Do you have a grinder in here?”
Me : A what?!?
Guard: “A marijuana grinder”
Me (flabbergasted) “No!”
At this point I was thinking what in the world would make this guard think I have a marijuana grinder in my purse? I’m a stay-at-home mom for crying out loud. I don’t have time to mess around with that!
At this point the guard asked to search through my purse. {Awkward moment}
Sometimes when I’m nervous I start talking. And saying stupid things.
In efforts to break up the awkward moment, I said “I usually just have diapers and wipes in here! {Nervous laugh}
He didn’t think it was that funny.
Then he opens the front pocket and pulls out my 40mm pancake lens and says “Ah…this is what they’re looking at.”
Yep. It’s a camera lens.
Not a marijuana grinder.
Knowing there was no threat, the kind security guard gave me my purse and marijuana grinder lens back.
So the lesson today is this: you may have to spend a little extra time going through security if you take a small camera lens.
The hubby and I spend the next couple hours laughing and joking about how ironic/stupid this situation was. Let’s say I was dumb enough to bring drug paraphernalia through security. Could you imagine the newspaper headlines?
STAY-AT-HOME MOM CHARGED WITH POSSESSION OF DRUG PARAPHERNALIA
Although getting questioned in security gave us plenty of nervous moments, it also gave us a lot of joking material.
Over the years we’ve learned to laugh through our struggles and awkward moments. What about you?
What’s something you’ve laughed about lately?
ha ha ha ah ah! Oh wow! Crazy!
I know–it was a pretty funny day! Next time I may just keep my camera and lens on my neck!
You’re supposed to GRIND marijuiana?? So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong….hey–could I borrow your camera lens? 😉
Ba ha ha! I’m so naive about that stuff I didn’t know you were supposed to grind it! On a side note the 40mm takes wonderful pictures!
Last September when Jim & I went to Las Vegas, I took a rather large silver coin with me. We were thinking of hitting the Pawn Stars pawn shop while we were out there. Going thru the St. Louis airport security was quite interesting. For one thing, Jim is always the one to get pulled off to the side to get searched (that’s another story all on it’s own), never me. I was carrying a smaller cross body purse and I wasn’t about to put this coin inside my luggage. Due to the amount of people around me in line, I didn’t feel comfortable taking the coin out and putting in the bucket. So as it runs thru the scanner, guess what……yep, I’m the one who gets pulled off to the side. I had this ‘he-man’ gorilla looking security woman going thru my purse. She pulled out my tiny wallet, which only had my license, cash and cards in it. She went thru another little bag that I had put loose change in. She put kept saying “I don’t see anything in here. I’m going to run it thru again”. Now keep in mind, I had a feeling what was being seen, but she had instructed me not to say anything so I didn’t. She ran my purse back thru and sure enough it again lit up like a Christmas tree. So here we go, ‘he-man’ gorilla security woman going at it again. She finally said “the viewer is indicating that you have a ‘dense’ object in here, but I’m not finding anything”, so I said “well, I can get it for you” and she said “you can show me where, you in no way can touch” (and this is MY purse!). So I said, “there’s a small zip compartment on the inside. I think you’ll find ‘it’ in there”. Well, she unzips it and first she found my small mirror that flips open (I had to actually show her how it opened). Then finally she found my silver coin. You should have saw how big her eyes got. After finding it she had to put my little purse back thru the scanner and all was clear, but then she very nicely asked if she could take a closer look at my coin. The next think I knew, 3 other security officers were also coming over to look at it. In the meantime, thru all of this, Jim was just standing off to the side waiting and laughing. Needless to say, we didn’t visit the Pawn Stars so when flying back home from Las Vegas, I saved us all the trouble and just pulled the coin out ahead of time. Thankfully, it was a very early morning flight and hardly no people.
I understand that this is the job these folks have, but at the same time I feel like they’re also implying that you’re a criminal or committing some kind of wrong doing when it’s something completely innocent.
Wow–sounds like you were in a similar awkward position as I was! It really does make for a funny story–thanks for sharing yours, Amy!
How terrifying for you! When we travelled to the USA from England I had eaten a banana before the flight (which I had carried in my bag). At security in the US, the drug sniffing dog came and sat by my bag, I nearly fainted! He smelled the banana from hours earlier, and I thought someone had planted drugs on me!
Wow! That’s amazing the dog could still smell the banana hours later! Thinking someone planted drugs on me was what I was really scared of. Thankfully for both of us it turned out to be nothing!