Some Like It Scott: The 311

November 22, 2006

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In Scott's second installment, he walks you through the latest in safety regulations from the Transportation Safety Authority. You can always read more of him at somelikeitscott.com.

As most of us know, Thanksgiving is the busiest travel time of the year. I know that you’re all shocked it isn’t Passover. (God knows I was.) I want to help all of you world weary travelers avoid a carry-on calamity this holiday season. And so I’ve taken the liberty of being your Jewish mother and reading all the Travel Security Administration rules in legalese about liquids in your carry on and I’ve translated it here in Gayman’s terms.

3-1-1 -Now you’re going to have no idea what these numbers stand for or why they’re choosing them for their new campaign to supposedly educate and make security lines go faster. Prepare yourself – the 3 stands for 3 ounces, the first 1 stands for 1 quart sized clear plastic bag and the other 1 stands for 1 bag per person. Like a basement sale at Filene’s -- as many 3 ounce bottles as you can cram into that quart sized bag is just fine just don’t let any individual bottle be more than 3 ounces. They go even further to say the bag has to zip at the top (enter the marketing tie-in with Ziploc).

I’m not proud that it takes several products to make me look the way I do every day but I’ve also resigned myself to the fact. I used to love shopping for all of those “travel sized” products but now I just find them expensive and never the real products I use. However, for the sake of 3-1-1 and your benefit, on a recent trip I decided to sacrifice my brand of designer shave cream (among other things) and go for the drugstore equivalent due to the fact it came in a 2.5 ounce size. All told I think I had a total of 32 ounces in my bulging baggie.

I was standing there in line at security with my shoes and belt off, my laptop under my arm and now my baggie, I felt a little like this was prison or showering in the dorm. Is it wrong to feel “exposed” standing there in your socks, trying to juggle everything that has to go in a bin or on the belt by itself? Not to mention, any time you get a Jew in a line with all their belongings in their hands and make them walk through something, there’s bound to be an ethnic flashback of epic proportions. “Yes, I have my boarding pass still on me and I’m hurrying, Mr. Himmler! Thanks for the yellow star. Ooh! Look! I also get a pink triangle!”

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