Security personnel are on the lookout for people who fit the Profile of Suspected Terrorists, which is as follows:

PROFILE OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS

SEX: Male

AGE: 15 through 74

LOOKS SUSPICIOUS: Yes

As a smart traveler who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of being taken to a small airless interrogation room and having electrical wiring attached to your various genitals, you should make every effort to avoid fitting this profile. This means that if you are, for example, a male, you should try to deflect the security personnel’s attention away from this fact via such techniques as:

Wearing a dress (This is how Oliver North handles it). Periodically remarking out loud to nobody in particular: “I certainly have a lot of body hair, for a woman!”

At the security checkpoint, your carry-on baggage must be placed on a conveyor belt and passed through an X-ray machine so the security personnel can see if you are carrying questionable items, because if you are, federal law requires them to open up your luggage and root around among your personal belongings like starving boars in a full Dumpster. If they find anything suspicious, For Your Own Protection they will ask you certain standard security questions, such as:

“What’s this stain in your underwear? Cheez Whiz?” “This is a vibrator? I never seen a vibrator this big! HEY, NORM! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS LADY’S VIBRATOR!”

Airport security personnel are chosen for their sense of humor, and there is nothing they enjoy so much as a good joke. A fun game you kids can play with them is “Uncle Ted.” What you do is, when you get near the security checkpoint, you walk up to a passenger selected at random and say in a loud voice, “Uncle Ted, can I see the bomb again?” Ha ha! Those wacky, fun-loving security personnel will sure come running! They might even take “Uncle Ted” for a ride in the electric cart! They might even take YOU for a ride in the electric cart if you mention the detonator in Mom’s purse!

In this chapter Mr. Barry has been quite critical of commercial air travel, so we have decided, in the interest of fairness, to allow the airline industry an opportunity to respond. The following point-by-point rebuttal was written by Mr. M. Duane LeGrout, president of the American Association of Associated Airline Companies in Association with Each Other.

Dear Airline Passenger:

We will be starting this rebuttal in just a few moments. Please remain in the area, as we are almost ready to start this point-by-point rebuttal. Thank you.

We apologize for the delay. We will begin rebutting very soon now, and we are grateful for your patience.

We have an announcement for those readers who are waiting for the point-by-point rebuttal. We are experiencing a minor equipment problem with our word processor at this time, but we do expect to have an announcement very soon and we do ask for your continued patience. In the meantime, we regret to announce that we have overbooked this rebuttal, and we are asking for readers who are willing to give up their space in exchange for an opportunity to read two future rebuttals on a topic of your choice. Thank you, and we expect to have another announcement shortly.

Okay, we do apologize for any inconvenience, but we have been informed that the word-processor problems have been corrected and we will begin rebutting any moment now. We ask that those of you with small shrieking children pLeAse asssidaisaas *(*A*&AA hey can someBoDy fiX this goddam

REBUTTAL CANCELED! SEE AGENT!

Sincerely,

M. Duane LeGrout President

Family travel has been an American tradition ever since the days when hardy pioneer families crossed the Great Plains in oxen-drawn covered wagons, braving harsh weather, hostile Native Americans, unforgiving terrain, scarce food, and—worst of all—the constant whining coming from the backseat:

“Are we there yet?” “Hey! THESE plains aren’t so great!” “Mom, Ezra is making hostile gestures at those Native Americans!” “Are we almost there?” “Mom! Rebecca dumped some unforgiving terrain into my scarce food!” “PLEASE can we stop here and settle Kansas please please PLEASE??” “Yuck! We’re eating bison again?” “When are we going to be there?” “Mom! Little Ben put oxen poop in his hair!”

Yes, it was brutally hard, but those brave pioneers kept going, day after day, month after month, never stopping, and do you know why? Because Dad was driving, that’s why. When Dad is driving, he never stops for anything. This is part of the Guy Code of Conduct. A lot of those early pioneer dads, when they got to California, drove their wagons directly into the Pacific Ocean and would probably have continued to Japan if it hadn’t been for shark damage to the oxen.

Another part of the Guy Code of Conduct still in effect is that only Dad can drive. If necessary, Dad will permanently bond his hands to the steering wheel with Krazy Glue to prevent Mom from driving, because he knows that if she had the wheel, she might suffer a lapse of judgment and decide to actually stop for something, such as food or sleep or medical care for little Jennifer, whose appendix has apparently burst. No, Dad will not allow minor distractions such as these to interfere with his vacation schedule, which looks like this:

6:00-6:15 A.M.: See Yellowstone National Park 6:15-6:25 A.M.: See Grand Canyon 6:15-7:00 A.M.: See Latin America

What Dad means by “see,” of course, is “drive past at 67 miles per hour.” Dad feels it is a foolish waste of valuable vacation time to get out of the car and actually go look at an attraction such as the White House, Niagara Falls, the Louvre, etc.

I myself have been guilty of this behavior. Once we were driving across the country and we got to South Dakota, a dirt-intensive state so sparsely populated that merely by entering it you automatically become a member of the legislature. A major tourist attraction in South Dakota is something called “Wall Drug,” which is basically a group of stores advertised by a string of billboards that begins somewhere outside of the solar system. My wife, Beth, wanted to stop. Her reasoning was that we had driven hundreds of miles that day with absolutely no activity to relieve our boredom except eating Stuckey’s miniature pecan pies at the rate of approximately three pies per person per hour. And so as we drew closer to Wall Drug, passing billboard after billboard—157 miles to go, 153 miles to go, 146 miles to go, etc.—her anticipation mounted, until finally we were there, and Beth’s excitement reached a fever pitch because this was the only point of interest for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, and of course I elected to whiz right past it, as though I had an important appointment elsewhere in South Dakota to pick up an urgent load of manure.

You know how certain incidents become permanent sore points in a marriage? Like for example a husband will never let his wife forget the time she left a $2,000 video camera where the baby could get hold of it and drop it into the toilet? That’s the status that the Wall Drug Incident has achieved in our marriage. My wife feels that we’re the only people in the history of interstate travel who failed to stop there, and, fifteen years later, she is still bitter. If she ever files for a divorce, this is the first incident she’ll mention to the lawyer. And that’s the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind. Especially if you travel with children. We traveled extensively with our son Robert when he was very young, and I have many, many vivid memories of that period, all of which involve public rest rooms.