This holiday season, you may be crisscrossing the country by air. Rules change constantly, so my wife Tracy checked the latest and greatest TSA rules for what we could pack. She was reading some of the more bizarre items to me. I thought they would make a good laugh at the government’s expense.
The list of prohibited items seems obvious to me, but we still have hundreds of people every year who have loaded handguns confiscated at TSA security. Should people this stupid be allowed to fly or even operate cars? I have doubts. Some of the prohibited items include dynamite, engines, English Christmas Crackers, fertilizer, fire extinguishers, flare guns, and rocket launchers. I am trying to imagine an engine block as a lethal weapon. Would a hijacker declare, “turn this plane around or I will drop this on your foot”? I am thinking, if you were allowed fire extinguishers, you could safely carry unloaded flare guns, rocket launchers and Christmas Crackers, right? On the other hand, someone carrying a rocket launcher from the taxi drop off might attract a certain amount of attention.
The long list of things that are allowed on a plane might be worth a raised eyebrow or two. Alphabetically we have airbrushes for makeup, antlers, artificial skeletons, axes, baseball bats, blenders, bocce balls, bread machines, camp stoves, canoe paddles, cattle prods (yes you read that right, cattle prods are OK if put in your checked luggage), cowboy spurs, crampons, cremated remains, cricket bats, crowbars, duct tape, fishing poles, foam toy swords (they have to be checked luggage), fresh eggs, frozen foods, geiger counters, and the list goes on for pages. It is true that a lot of these items are only allowed in your checked luggage, but I wonder if a creative but warped mind could use some of these items inappropriately. For example: antlers are allowed as carry-on items. I personally think it would be very inconsiderate taking up all the overhead storage. The eggs could be handy when heckling a Southwest Airlines attendant telling lame jokes at the front of the plane. Duct tape could be really useful in dealing with a fidgety 5-year-old boy or fixing leaks in the yellow inflatable floatation vests. On long international flights, we could relieve some of the boredom by bowling bocce balls and frozen turkeys down the aisles. Some of the other items could be used in self-defense, like the makeup air brush. You could paint yourself in camo and hide a corner next to the artificial skeleton.
Not all the TSA staff are unsmiling, humorless zombies at desks. Somebody at TSA wrote this into the list of things allowed as carry-ons. “Light Saber: Sadly, the technology doesn’t exist to create a real Light Saber, however, you can pack a toy Light Saber in your carryon or checked luggage. May the Force be with you!”
By ED PECK – Special to the Herald times
