“Welcome to my ordinary: taking off my shoes in airports and letting everyone see my socks. I feel safer doing this because a man tried to blow up a plane using his shoes once and now they look at everyone’s shoes. When people ask me later what it meant to live in ‘those days,’ I will tell them how we lined up and shuffled with out belongings to a place where we untied our shoes together and placed them on conveyer belts on our way to other places. Sometimes I forget to wear matching socks or socks without holes in them or interesting socks, and I wonder if someone notices me padding along silently with my wary eyes darting about to see if someone notices me trying not to be noticed.
“So many different ways we try not to be noticed. So many different instances of avoidance. We stand and will stand in these lines with strangers among signs that warn of influenzas and remind us of the current terror alert. We stand and will stand in these lines with strangers unloading our pockets and splaying the contents of our belongings onto rollers. Gum wrappers, coins, music players that contain our library of songs, photos, movie clips of someone doing a silly dance.
“I remember imagining myself at a huge slumber party with all of my friends, taking off my shoes entering Mrs. Rinaldi’s house and smelling pizza. ‘Take off your shoes, boys.’ We do as we’re told because we’re used to it, no? Sometimes I think that there might not have been a shoe bomber at all. That they just thought that telling people to take off their shoes was a good way to convince them that someone was in charge.
“A kind of inside joke at various governmental organizations, streamlined and centralized for the convenience of, supposedly, everyone.
“Sometimes I think that it will seem sad, in the distant future, to think of everyone living in the shadow of imminent attack. Of the simple indignities of bending to untie laces and then sit on the other side of the checkpoint to lace them back up again.
“Other times I realize how exciting we will make it seem. To live in a world of constant danger and excitement, made most visible on the most exciting and dangerous or wonderful or sad of days: the vacation travel days; the business trips to important meetings; the trips to Waukeegan for a cousin’s wedding or to Skokie for a grandmother’s funeral. We, the daring travelers who lived our lives in defiance of the terrorists! We who took off our shoes in an act of defiance and insistence upon our strength as a nation and a people.
“Or something like that. Can you think of how ludicrous all of this will sound to our own ears when we imagine each other exactly as we live in those lines now? Tiptoeing and pausing at the metal detector until the uniformed officer waves us forward and glances at a piece of paper that we could have printed on construction paper.
“And remember the frustrations of amateurs. The embarrassing moments of forgetfulness. When the protocols and habits lipped our minds. We were already sitting on the beach in our imagination! How could we have forgotten to put our toaster oven on the conveyer belt?!? So distracted out of the ordinary and into a realm of silent repetitions. Listing the starting five of the Knicks to keep ourselves occupied. Listing capitals and cities that we visited as children as a man with a beard gets a second round of questioning.
“One time, in Chicago, I was waiting for my bag to come through the conveyer belt on the other side of the checkpoint, holding my shoes in my hand.
“I said to the man watching the x-ray screen, ‘You must see a lot of crazy things come through here.’ Someone had stopped to argue with the guard and the conveyer belt had to be stopped. Something about confusions related to liquids and gels. Some missed detail. ‘The Terror Threat Level is Orange,’ said a loudspeaker.
“The x-ray technician (‘Wow, Grandpa, is that what they were?’ I can hear the voices of my grandchildren already) turned to me and said, ‘Just yesterday morning someone left their cat in a carry-on cage on top of the conveyer belt. The animal went right through the machine, just like that. No one realized before the darn thing showed up on the screen!”
“I imagined the owner of Fluffy or Elmo or whatever the cat’s name, standing there in his socks, whistling a distracting tune and then remembering, ‘Holy Hell! Fluffy is definitely still in her cage!’
“Our new ordinary. This life of ours, passing us by right now as we stand and listen incredulously to stories about animals with x-rays passing through their bodies. You might ask if this really stands as the exemplary condition of our contemporary life and I would ask you only in turn to name some other triviality that so embodies the quiet erosion of privacy. That so deliciously gets us to act like we’re in our living rooms. That so clearly demonstrates the arbitrary power to which we submit ourselves for the benefit, supposed or otherwise, of peace of mind. I don’t think it’s out there.
“Nor could one find a better or more curious sense of relief than sitting on a metallic bench and re-tying the shoes. Having passed through the space of dreaded transition into a new kind of limbo reality, where we can eat fast food and listen to our library of music and board a giant metallic transporter to a distant tropical island. We are on the other side of the ordinary now. We have entered the weird space of the terminal and we are putting on our shoes. The terror threat level is orange and we are fine.”
