on passports

and moving freely

At the airport recently, a TSA agent sent me back to my airline’s ticket counter because my birthday was wrong. It wasn’t a big deal to do, though it was naturally annoying, after having stood in line, to go stand in line again so I could… stand in line again. (Later I realized I actually didn’t have to stand in line again—you can cut the line! But I didn’t notice until that was of no use to me.) I had plenty of time.

Like any dealing with TSA, this was a little stressful. I was supposed to take my corrected boarding pass back to precisely the same person and lane as before but when I got back to the head of the line, she was gone and I had to go to somebody else at a different desk. Would it matter…? No, as it turned out.

But maybe it could have mattered if somebody had wanted to jerk me around because they were bored—I don’t know. Really, you never do know in these situations.