“Have your tickets out in your hand!” repeats wearily the TSA person at the Los Angeles airport. Shoes must be x-rayed, and coats must be removed. I try to keep my tickets in my hand as I untie my shoes and put them in the basket. I take off my coat and put it with my shoes. My flimsy paper tickets get bent. I take out my wallet and put it in the carryon bag. My wallet has a big metal clip and if I forget to remove the wallet from my pocket the alarms go off at the metal detector, and I am sent back to the mouth of the x-ray machine, like a naughty school boy caught trying to sneak something past the teacher. If I put my wallet away too soon I can’t pass the TSA screener who looks at your tickets and your valid I.D. I take off my watch, and take out the cell phone and keys from my pockets, all the while holding my tickets in my hand. Sometimes I remember to put these items away before I enter the security line, but usually I don’t remember. I put my watch, cell phone, and keys in my computer bag. I wonder if the people who make the security rules have to go through the same security process that I do.

“Have your tickets out in your hand!” The TSA guard rolls his eyes as an elderly gentleman in front of me has to confess that he accidentally sent his tickets through the x-ray machine. The guards make a public example of him. I remove my laptop computer from my computer bag and put it in a basket by itself. You can’t have your computer in a basket with anything else. Good thing I don’t have any toothpaste or liquids that I need to put in a separate quart-size bag and handle as a separate item. People behind me are impatiently pushing my baskets, or going around me. Finally ready, I push my computer basket, my basket with shoes and coat, my computer bag, and my carryon bag along, feeding them into the x-ray machine. I feel like I need five hands.

As I walk through the metal detector I try to keep calm and cool, making sure to hold out my tickets in my hand as I pass by the TSA guard. A false move and they may make you go through the more intimate search. Oops, I staggered a bit and hit the sides of the metal detector, setting off alarms. I am required to back up and try it again. I have to be ready to grab my coat, shoes, computer in a separate basket, computer bag, and carryon as everything is piling up on the other side of the x-ray machine. I have been warned many times that you must be careful of theft at the x-ray machines. One trick thieves use has someone hold you up from going through the metal detector, while his partner steals your stuff as it comes out of the x-ray machine. Once I recover all of my stuff, I reverse the strip down process.

One more travel humiliation down; how many left to go?

We had a coal-burning furnace in the basement. There was a coal bin also in the basement. When we bought coal the men would dump it down the shoot into the coal bin. The coal bin was very dark and dirty, and mom always knew when you had been playing in the coal bin; there would be black smudges all over you. But we didn't like to play in the basement anyway. The coal would not completely burn and there would remain "clinkers" in the furnace. These had to be removed from time to time, to make room for the new coal. They were taken out (usually by my mother) with tongs or a shovel. When siting on the basement floor they gave off a pretty red glow. But I learned that clinkers were not to be touched. I understood perfectly the nursery rhyme "Little Tommy Tinker, sat on a clinker, and he began to cry, 'Mamma! Mamma!' poor little innocent guy." I believe the version of my older brothers ended with "poor little stupid guy." But it seemed to me to be a perfectly natural mistake to make once, if you were just a little guy.