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Let me set the scene for you.

Yesterday morning, the day after Christmas, I had to go on a work trip to Detroit. The plane left at 5:20 am, which was maybe the dumbest idea I have ever had for booking work travel.

But I got up at 3 am, drove to the airport, parked and walked into the airport. Before I even got in the doors, I saw massive lines and chaos all over the place, and realized this might be one of those days where my spiritual meter might dip a little.

It wasn’t so bad, though. I got my tickets in a reasonable amount of time, then got in line for the TSA conveyor belts. Again, not too bad. When I got to the bins to put my stuff on, though, that’s when the fireworks began.

As I waited to start loading my stuff, an older guy, maybe 70-75 years old, came back and stood beside me. He’d clearly been ahead of me and gotten sent back by the TSA crew to put something through again. Happens to the best of us, and it ain’t fun—this dude was standing there hoping some grumpy traveller would let him squeeze back in.

I was that grumpy traveler. I told him to go ahead, and he said thank you in a very kind voice… then he let loose. In a series of f-bombs that was quite impressive for an older gentleman such as him, this guy started railing on TSA for busting his chops about his shoes. I didn’t even catch what the issue was, but apparently the shoes might have had metal in them and needed to be scanned.

He was loud enough that a flight attendant and pilot standing behind me whispered, “Geez, they probably didn’t need to send him back through for that.” He must have heard, because that only empowered him. He put his shoes on the belt and said to a random TSA worker who had thus far not been involved, “This is ridiculous. You guys are ridiculous.”

Whoa. That one felt out of bounds for me. Grumbling about TSA is one thing, even if the volume is a little loud. But it felt very insulting to the people there on Dec. 26 at 3:45 am to call their jobs ridiculous, and that is exactly how everybody received those words from him. Even the flight crew behind me turned on the guy.

So of course the dude goes through the full body scanner again and is told that he needs to go back and put his shoes through again. I didn’t catch the reason, and neither did he because he was absolutely boiling. He kept calling everybody and everything ridiculous, and I saw TSA agents all gathering around and giving each other looks like, “OK, fine, you want it to be ridiculous, it’s gonna be ridiculous times 10.”

So they dogged this guy. Sent him back and forth another time or two. The guy was losing his mind, and he had his whole family waiting on the other side. They were standing there silent, just letting him vent, and I got a bit of a sad feeling at that point because this dude was soooooo mad. Not mad. Big mad. The kind of mad that isn’t really about sending your shoes through the x-ray machine an extra time or two.

Eventually the dude got through, but they put him through the wringer, and it was purposeful. They might have been a little bit nagging initially, but then he got pissed and they responded with pissyness, too, and the whole thing just was ugly.

I’m writing about this on a recovery newsletter because it was a vivid window into what it looks like when there is disagreement and people dig in. I am certainly capable of that and always have been. I tend to get into an argument and switch to trying to win the argument, versus having a conversation about something we might not agree on. I have to win, and when somebody is doing that, there is no win. If I happen to crush the other person in an argument, I doubt that relationship improved from my glorious win.

That’s a recovery thing. When you talk to people with good sobriety, you’ll notice that there isn’t a lot of airing of grievances. Good sobriety usually means that when you hit a pothole, you move on, rather than launch a full investigation into who put the pothole there, why wasn’t it fixed, etc. I was thinking of all the people in my life whose sobriety I respect, and I couldn't come up with a single one who would have had that ugly argument with TSA. There might have been heavy helpings of quiet sarcasm and character assassination, which I am here for usually, but I can’t imagine them wanting to engage in an unwinnable argument with people who can decide whether you go to jail or not over scanning your shoes.

I saw the guy later in the airport, and he seemed to have cooled down. He had his terrifying, dangerous shoes back on and was getting a drink from the water fountain. He seemed a little more tired than he had before, like maybe the weight of exploding at people was heavy on him. Or maybe he was just an old dude hunched over at a water fountain. Either way, I couldn’t help but think the whole damn thing was exactly what he called it: ridiculous.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

Before a meeting was about to start, the young chairperson asked the older newcomer to read, “How It Works,” giving him a photocopied sheet from Chapter Five of the Big Book. A few minutes later, the newcomer politely handed the sheet back to the chairperson.

“You’re supposed to read this,” explained the chair.

“I just did,” said the elderly beginner.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, Jan. 2000, by Ernie S. and Doug R., New York, NY)

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A Christmas airport kerfuffle to learn from

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