Your Tax Dollars at Work: Beware of Hippie-Toothpaste-Squeezing Terrorists

The middle aged mom and her long-haired teenaged son snaked their way through the security line at Bob Hope International.  A short, dark haired woman stuffed into her TSA uniform bellowed, “Gels and liquids to the left!  Everyone else, straight!”

The mom heaved their overnight bag onto the examination table, unzipped it, and presented the regulation zip-locked baggie to TSA II, a grizzled man with spectacles flecked with bits of skin and lint.  He gripped it between latexed finger and thumb and examined the tiny shampoo bottle from a long-forgotten hotel and the almost empty tube of Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Toothpaste for Kids, crumpled and rolled within an inch of its life. 

He shook the bag and squinted at the tube. He removed the offending article and weighed it in the palm of his hand. “This can’t come,” he stated, punctuating his pronouncement by rising up on his tiptoes.

“Why on earth not?”

“It says here ‘5 oz.’. We only allow three.”

“But it’s almost empty! It’s just enough toothpaste for one night in Oakland,” explained the mother, pointing at the slight bulge near the cap.

“Don’t touch!” His speckled glasses slipped down his nose as he jerked the tube out of reach.

“Oh, puh-leeze!  May I see a supervisor?

“Mom…?” the teenage boy’s eyes darted from Mom’s face to where Speckles was now waving his arms while talking with the matronly TSA supervisor who glanced over at the waiting mother and son, and the line forming behind them. Her generous mouth went wide and thin and her nostrils flared.

“Uh-oh,” said the boy, watching as the supervisor inhaled and launched herself in their direction.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. This is all very—well, silly.  This tube…” the mother attempted once again to touch the contraband tube of Tom’s, which lay forlornly on the stainless steel counter.

“You may not touch the item in question, M’am!”  Supervisor-woman growled, snatching up the wretched toothpaste in her French manicured claws. She unfurled it for closer inspection.  “The gov’ment rules are clear.  Three ounces. This toothpaste is five ounces.”

“It’s only a gram of toothpaste. Enough for one night!” The mother brushed her son’s hand from her arm.

The supervisor leaned in and lowered her voice, “You can buy travel-sized toothpaste at any airport newsstand.”

“Not a fluoride-free toothpaste,” explained the mom, matching the supervisor’s ‘you’re a retard’ cadence note for note.

The stand-off lasted long enough for the mother to see once again the shriveled grey forest outside the fluoride plant in Montana where fluorine was converted into fluoride for toothpaste. She was 17, wearing a Hawaiian shirt with thin, tanned legs protruding from regulation cut-offs, looking out the dust-flecked passenger window of her sister’s chugging powder blue 1969 VW hatchback.  The thick pine forest on either side of the two-lane road retreated around a large parking lot of grimy pick-up trucks.  A factory rose up behind them, a grey monolith belching smoke blowing toward a tall mountain that had once been carpeted in tall green conifers.  An apron of dead grey trees ran up the side of the mountain in the path of the smoke plume. Above, Montana’s bright blue sky absorbed the lethal cloud.  A moment later, the dark green forest surrounded them once again; swallowing its poisonous secret within.

“I think we’re done here,” barked Supervisor lady, flicking her wrist in a gesture that is commonly known as “giving the hand.” She swiveled, and was gone.  And so was the offending Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry Toothpaste for Kids.

Later that night at the Holiday Inn, the mother emptied the tote bag onto a queen-sized bed.  Out fell the lonely shampoo in its baggie, followed by PJs, a hairbrush, extra undies, and then, tucked into a pair of slippers, a narrow, eight-inch rectangle box imprinted with the Tom’s of Maine logo.  The mother pulled from it a brand-new tube of non-fluoride spearmint toothpaste.  She held it up for her son to see. “Oops.”

“Now I feel safe!” he laughed.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Beware of Hippie-Toothpaste-Squeezing Terrorists originally appeared in The Beachwood Voice, Spring, 2007.

Update from Prudence:
Our journey that began with a bureaucratic toe-stub ended up as the impetus for our family’s move to Vermont.  We went to the Bay Area on a lark—the chance to have one last mom-and-son adventure together before I would, through no fault of my own, be relegated to rank of Bothersome Parent. With nothing to lose and nothing invested except a pair of cheap round-trip tickets, we relaxed through an evening’s presentation by a progressive East Coast prep school.  No one was more surprised than I when my son followed through and applied, then was accepted at the school.  So, with everything to lose AND everything to gain, we sold our home in Los Angeles, packed up and left—all in the space of six months—taking several tubes of Tom’s of Maine fluoride-free toothpaste with us as we drove across the country.