My parents arrived here safely yesterday. That fact was not a foregone conclusion. It�s not that the plane could crash or that they could become ill or anything similar that causes me to doubt, in retrospect, their safe arrival. It�s that my mother...my mother....well, it pains me to admit it but, well, airport security took a while to decide that she was not a terrorist.

It was not her feistiness, her intelligence, or her political views that were at issue. (As for her political views, those of both my father and my husband are probably more suspect but I doubt the airport screeners knew it.) It certainly was not her wearing her hair in a bun and using hairpins to hold it although it might have been. It was not the fact that she lives in a desert climate or that she�s from the State of Arizona even though either of those facts might otherwise be sufficient.

So what did my mother do to provoke such scrutiny that they searched her carry-on luggage three times? What did she do that caused one screener to want to put her luggage back through the x-ray device a second time even after the searches? She didn�t know. The screener asked if she could have a scissors. She told the screener �No.� She was wrong.

She forgot that, several years back, she had put a small sewing kit from a hotel in that luggage. Worse, that sewing kit had an eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny scissors. The whole scissors was maybe an inch longer. She doesn�t think they were dirty although she�s not ready to vouch for the cleanliness of an item she�s forgotten she had and clearly had never cleaned.

After the screener removed the scissors, the screener relaxed and offered to mail this item of potential destruction back to my mother. My mother declined, which is probably a good thing. I can see the headline now: �Airport Returns Contraband.� We could end up with a congressional inquiry into the matter. Worse, if they took her name who knows what the computer would do with that information. They�d be searching all her underwear from now on every time she flew.

I�m glad she�s here and I�m glad she�s flying back with Dad and not with me. I�m not traveling with any potential terrorist. I have my reputation to protect.

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