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Kids a danger to national security? Fairfield Daily Republic/Kelvin Wade | August 25 2005 Did you hear last week that babies have been prevented from boarding planes because they had similar names to people on no-fly lists? Recently, my girlfriend's 8-year-old granddaughter Lauryn flew out to visit from North Carolina and was given extra scrutiny, including being wanded. It got me thinking. Maybe airline security is onto something. Perhaps, borrowing the president's argument, North Carolina's airport security is fighting Lauryn there so we don't have to fight her over here in California. Still, I went over the list of the 19 hijackers who terrorized America on Sept. 11 and couldn't find a single third-grader. But that doesn't prove anything. Why wouldn't al-Qaida recruit an 8-year-old? If you've ever seen what an 8-year-old's bedroom can look like, they can cause quite a bit of destruction. One of Lauryn's favorite places to go when she's out here on the West Coast is San Francisco. In fact, earlier this month she insisted I take a picture of her with the Golden Gate Bridge behind her. Was I duped? Could she have been casing the bridge for possible terrorist acts? If the government would use the Patriot Act and go after Lauryn's library records, they might find that she's read subversive books like "Curious George," an obvious insult to the commander in chief. Since my home office doubled as her bedroom, I had unique access to her belongings. Once, when I was alone, I decided to look into her bag. I opened it with much trepidation and beheld the contents: two dollars and 65 cents, some candy and a one-legged Barbie Doll. Either this is what a normal 8-year-old would have or she's some kind of terrorist MacGyver who's planning on using those components to fashion some kind of unknown weapon. The only connection I could make between her and Arab Muslim extremism was the fact that she slept on an air mattresses facing Mecca, had a VHS copy of Aladdin in her possession and she loathed watching coverage of the Iraq war on the news, preferring an animated yellow undersea sponge. When we played Disney's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding on my PC, I noticed that Lauryn was only interested in the tricks that Goofy could do while in the air with his skateboard and wasn't at all interested in how to take off or land. This is definitely one of those things that make you go. . . hmmm. Once, when I took her to the store and offered to buy her candy, she selected Pop Rocks. Now she could have chosen a positive, life-affirming candy like Lifesavers, but no, she chose an exploding candy. Another clue? Comedian Bill Maher mused that the people who handle security in Las Vegas should be in charge of airline security because in Vegas, they're so good that they can detect people doing math in their heads! But no, we have geniuses keeping babies off flights until their identities can be proven. To paraphrase Bobby Mercer, these security people couldn't find boobs in a strip joint. I understand that babies can "explode" in screams at any time and have been known to sport "loaded" diapers, but are they really a threat to national security? Couldn't there be a better use of our tax dollars? Babies? Eight year olds? Are they a threat to bring down a jetliner? Couldn't they focus on the elderly and disabled, for instance? Peace. |
