This Side of the Pond

The percentage of British occupying the Pridgeon compound has tripled with the arrival of my dear parents, who braved the long voyage from the homeland for more than two months of vacation in the glorious green-up of our Black Hills.

They reside for the moment in an old hunting cabin located in our yard, which we repurposed in a roaring hurry upon hearing they’d booked their plane tickets. Once a lodge for a local squirrel with bare wood walls and a tin roof, it has now been properly insulated and floored and even boasts a tea kettle for that most basic of British necessities.

We are feeling particularly lucky for their presence because they almost didn’t make it.

If things had gone any differently on their journey – and they easily could have, to put it mildly – they would instead have been taking a time out in a jail cell.

They flew out from Heathrow Airport – the largest and busiest in Europe. For context, an estimated 128,000 people travel through it every single day, so you can imagine the bustle and hustle.

You can also imagine that the TSA agents in Heathrow Airport are well-practiced in making sure no contraband gets through and no doubt feel they’ve seen it all by now.

They were wrong.

My dear dad rocked up to the security gates with a bag containing, of all things, a box cutter.

Now, if you asked him today, he would likely tell you that he doesn’t really know what was going on in his head when he made the decision to place an extremely sharp and potentially lethal tool inside his hand luggage.

What he told the gate security agent, however, was that he’d brought it so he could open his medications.

I’ve had a pair of tweezers removed from my hand luggage before on the basis that an official in Dublin Airport considered me capable of using them to hijack a plane. I’m not sure exactly what threats they thought I was going to make in order to convince those poor pilots to hand over control, but I guess they were happy with their eyebrows exactly how they already were.

A box cutter is a whole different kettle of fish – you really could alarm an air stewardess with one of those. You would assume, on this basis, that the security guards would be quick to remove it from his possession.

Not these security guards. Instead of placing it in the contraband bin, they informed my mum and dad that – and I quote – “considering your profile,” they had decided to give it back to him.

Yes, you read that correctly. My dad was allowed access to the busiest terminal of the busiest airport in Europe and then escorted onto a transatlantic plane carrying about 300 people while still in possession of an extremely sharp implement, all because they had “considered his profile” and didn’t think it would do any harm.

We aren’t sure whether to be flattered they thought him this trustworthy or insulted they considered him so little a threat.

They did make sure to point out that he would want to remove it from his hand luggage once in Denver so that he could declare it to the customs agents there. International visitors must go through border customs at their first destination in the States and they couldn’t guarantee, they said, that their American counterparts would feel the same way.

I could have stopped her right there. I would very much like to have assured her that there was not a cat’s chance in hell that the border agents in Denver were going to be forgiving on this topic.

Unfortunately, I was neither in Heathrow nor Denver, so I didn’t get to witness the very tall, very muscled, very intimidating border guard perform the kind of sharp intake of breath usually associated with ladies in period dramas written by Jane Austen.

It will not surprise you to hear that my parents’ “profile”, whatever that may mean, was not sufficient to convince the TSA that they should be trundling along the concourse with a knife. It was duly removed from their possession and is now probably housed in the glass cabinet I am convinced they must have in the back room to display the most audacious items people have attempted to bring through customs.

I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that my dad’s box cutter (he couldn’t have made do with scissors?) has taken pride of place in that collection.

I am more surprised, if I am going to be honest, that my parents were allowed to continue on with their journey. Their “profile” might not have been enough to justify the packing of weaponry, but it was apparently sufficient to allow them on board another plane.

Not before my poor father had been escorted into a closed room to be searched, of course. Twice, because they couldn’t be sure the first time, and who could really blame them?

The positive ending to this story is that, to my great relief, my parents made it here despite their antics and we are now enjoying every moment of their company.

On the downside, we haven’t been able to open a single box.