this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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The first several times I flew, which wound up being maybe forty total flights by the time I concluded my long-distance relationship in marriage, I would be "randomly selected" for secondary screenings, bag checks, and finger-tip swabs. Every single time. This eventually stopped happening, but the only thing that really changed was I lost a bunch of weight. I don't know what the connection was.
Wow, I guess I’m not the only one this has happened to. I’ve been inspected or forced to jump through some additional hoop 90% of the times I’ve gone through airport security. It has been going on for as long as I remember, and happens regardless of which country I’m in.
This always happens to my little brother. Sometimes it makes sense. One time he brought a book that was so big it was blocking the x ray or something. But other times it's completely random. This has happened pretty much every time we travel, I even have memories of it happening when he was like 7 years old. He's an adult now and it still happens.
I've made the book mistake a couple of times. When I immigrated to a new country, I had brought along several small carvings and ornaments that I liked to display on my shelves. Each was wrapped carefully in newspaper, but the TSA was not a big fan of that. Went through security at two different airports and had to stand there awkwardly while an agent unwrapped every last item and nodded in amusement over the peculiarness of each one.
Funny enough, I would bring bottles of assorted (mostly non-prescription) pills on each trip and they never batted so much as an eye at those. Could have easily been smuggling in MDMA for the better part of a decade.
Maybe we exert some kind of stressed or nervous behavior that is considered by TSA to be a potential red flag? Other than the weight-loss, the only thing I can think of that changed is perhaps my overall experience traveling finally chilled me out a bit and altered the way I carried myself.
I’m not sure what it could be, since I never get double inspected the same way twice in a row. I’ve had devices swabbed for chemicals, pat-downs, being made to walk through the metal detector multiple times (3+), and even standing still while a bomb-sniffing dog walked in circles round me.