Two things I’ve never seen before

So struck was I by two things I witnessed in the Denver airport today that I’m writing this entry on the plane home, with much of the day still ahead of me and the fate of my luggage up in the air. If something else remarkable happens, I may do an addendum, but for now I’m going to assume this entry will stand for the day.

Morning arrived as a mixed blessing. On the good side, I slept better than I have since I left home: four hours straight before awakening, and another stretch of three hours. The bad news was that despite keeping the heat off, the lack of a humidifier left me with a nose so clogged I could barely breathe through it and lips split and bloody.

I worked, took a long shower, worked some more, and rode the shuttle to the airport--all routine stuff for me on the road.

Airport security resembled a Disney ride line, with hundreds and hundreds of people ahead of us, but the TSA staffers were efficient and courteous, and my fellow travelers also generally behaved well. The wait was thus long but no more unpleasant than usual.

The first of the two unique events occurred after I had passed the ID check and while I was in line for the scanning machine. The woman in front of me, a petite thirty-something brunette in skin-tight blue jeans and a cream sweater so sheer and tight you could count the hooks in her bra strap (two), left the line to examine the trash barrel to our left. This barrel contained tons of things passengers remembered at the last second that they could not take through security. This woman slowed the line for almost two minutes as she dug through the trash and produced multiple items, which she then shoved into Baggies she had brought for the purpose. When she returned to the line, she must have caught the expression on my face, because she smiled, shrugged, and moved on.

The second event happened about a minute later. The archway through which I had to pass was serving two lines, ours and the one to the left. My turn was to come after a very large blond woman from the left line passed through it. This mid-thirties woman, who stood about my height and had to tip the scales somewhere north of three-fifty, wore all black and was dripping metal jewelry: three large earrings in each ear, multiple necklaces, a wide assortment of rings, and bracelets totaling at least three inches wide on each wrist. The security guy asked if she might like to take off some jewelry, but she shook her head, said she’d have no problems, and went through the detector.

It clanged.

The security guy smiled and said he’d now have to insist she take off all the jewelry. We all waited as she did, a process that understandably consumed more than a few moments. With a TSA bowl overflowing with jewelry now on its way through the scanner, she stepped through the detector.

It clanged again.

She said, “Oh, yeah!” and lifted her black sweater to expose an extremely large and very white stomach, at the apex of which sat the largest piece of belly jewelry I have ever seen. In my opinion, navel piercings on women can be very pretty, even quite sexy--but only on certain stomachs. As someone who is simply too fat himself, I am reluctant to criticize anyone’s weight, but I do believe that once you pass a certain size navel piercing is probably not a good idea. This woman obviously disagreed with my assessment, which in and of itself matters not at all, but the sheer size of her navel jewelry stunned me. It began with a large stone that sat atop a triangle of steel. Hanging from the bottom side of the triangle were strings of jewels, beads, and so on. From navel to bottom the contraption had to run at least five inches, and it was easily five or six inches wide at the bottom. Once she took it out, dropped it in a second white plastic bowl, and ran it through the machine, she passed easily through the security check.

Rarely do I experience such entertainment before 9:45 in the morning.

Addendum: Two items seem worthy of note.

First, all of my luggage arrived on the flight with me. The United luggage-handling folks had somehow managed to completely rip the cool name tag from the TED bag, but otherwise everything was intact.

Second, as a simple measure of the conference’s power, consider this: while discussing stories of two of the sessions, emotion so overcame me that I choked up and teared up. An amazing time.