This story occurred in late 2001, as I began to travel to visit various graduate schools.  This was right after 9/11 and the government was still in the process of overreacting by pasting the airports with new and ridiculous security directives.  In this case, there were still soldiers (not cops) prowling the terminals of the airport.  Not just the security checkpoint either, the concourses themselves.  This directive essentially mixed in members of our armed forces right next to the family of five who are heading to Orlando to suckle from the teat of Disney.  I can only assume the government figured that the terrorists were planning on a bold frontal assault where they would fight their way through the terminals, then the security checkpoints, and then onto the planes before anyone else showed up.

I was kind of ambivalent about the added security.  I very much doubted that it would do much good, but I also figured it wouldn’t put us at any further risk.

Boy was I wrong.

To set this up, you have to understand that the government didn’t exactly put their best guys in the airport.  The new people patrolling the terminals weren’t exactly navy SEALs.  They weren’t even regular army.  No, the people poised to protect our commercial air transportation industry were national guardsmen.  It was obvious from the condition of some of the weekend warriors that few of them were ready to be called up for active duty.

I had checked in and was stowing away my watch and keys for my date with the metal detector as I strolled by one of the entry doors for the terminal, where I observed a nearby guardsman through the glass of the sliding door.   He was watching the arriving cars alertly, ready to respond with cat-like reflexes should anyone be stupid enough to try something.  The efficacy of this gentleman in combat was questionable at best; I estimated his weight to be in the neighborhood of 300 pounds.  He looked like he had been painted into his fatigues, which strained to contain the rolling  prow of his gut.  As I watched, the guardsman backed slowly toward the door, which wooshed open as he activated the motion sensor.  As he stood there oblivious, the doors hissed shut.  Had they pinched him, the door would have failed to close and would have released him, ending the story right there.  This time, however, the doors missed him, but closed on his fanny pack, effectively trapping him.  Worse still, the guy’s M-16 rifle had been slung over his shoulder and was also trapped on the inside of the terminal, out of his control and pinned between the doors by its strap.

Making my flight suddenly became far less important than seeing how this guy would extract himself from this situation.  I parked my ass and got ready to watch the show.

Fortunately, his training kicked in, if indeed the military trains you to panic like a little girl when you get yourself into a jam.  He flailed around like a hooked marlin, doing a furious array of calisthenics that accomplished nothing other than drawing a bigger crowd.  After either (a) growing tired or (b) realizing the futility of this approach, our hero decided to switch tactics.  He paused in his wild gesticulations and craned his bulbous head around to survey his situation.  He came to the same conclusion as I: in order for him to spring free, he needed to remove his belt to activate the motion sensor that opened the door.  Glancing around nervously to see who’s watching, he does so.  I see there’s a pistol on his belt.  The sliding doors have completely disarmed him.

More troubles emerge: without the clinching support of his belt, this proud warrior’s trousers begin an inevitable slide as they lose the battle with the convex gut they sought to shroud.  One hand holding up his pants, the guy steps away from the door, feels his back, and realizes for the first time that he’s lost his machine gun as well, which is safely tucked on my side of the glass.  He freezes as he ponders this new dilemma: if he triggers the door, his gun will fall to the ground, possibly going off when it hits.  This is bad.  The only other option... his eyes track upwards to me and I meet his stricken gaze.

“Do you want me to hold it for you?” I ask, in the same tone an exasperated parent might use on an incompetent child.

He weighs this for a moment: turn his machine gun over to a stranger or risk discharging his gun in a crowded airport.  It’s a tough one.  I see him galvanize in resolution as his jaw sets.  “Stay back,” he says through the glass, “I’ll risk it.”

“Fire in the hole!” I yell loudly, drawing a flinch from the guardsman and the attention of more passer-bys.

He stepped backwards and the doors swooshed open.  Belt and gun clatter to the ground, both mercifully failing to go off.  The citizen-soldier rushed through the doors in full damage control mode.  “Move along, shows over,” he commanded the crowd, in a voice that sorely lacked for authority.  Few heeded his plea, and with good reason.  As he reached for his belt and gun, his trousers finally lost their battle with gravity and fell to his ankles, revealing a parachute-sized pair of tighty whities.  Overbalanced, he was sent tumbling to the ground.  Panicked anew, the guardsman struggled in vain to pull his fatigue pants up, which now appear to have become caught on his combat boots.  Peals of laughter rippled through the crowd, which attracted a knot of three or four slimmer (and presumably more competent) national guardsmen, who arrive to find their fellow defender of liberty furiously shaking his nearly bare ass like a portly male stripper at an impromptu performance.

“Beal, what the fuck do you think you’re doing!?!  Cover that skid mark up and grab that rifle, soldier!” screamed the apoplectic-with-rage sergeant.  At this, order was restored, and I had to make my flight.

Many of us assume modern airport security is a joke.  I learned it firsthand in less than two minutes.  Had this incident not predated the widespread proliferation of camera phones, I suspect everyone else would have too.