Too old to cause trouble, or so they think
If you’re a cheapskate like me, you’ve figured out that the only way to save money on airfares these days is to fly early in the day.
Very early. Like before roosters limber up their vocal cords.
So there was Your Hero one recent morning — the sun wasn’t up yet — grinding his way through the security checkpoint at a local airport.
The clock on the wall said 5:20 a.m. It was hardly the time or the setting for an unusual, memorable incident.
But as I crept through the line — yes, there was one, even at that hour — a young TSA employee (he could have been my grandson) marched up to me and said:
“Sir, are you 75?”
I’m not usually witty at 5-something in the morning, but I replied: “No, but I’m working on it.”
Great guffaws resulted from about 15 of my fellow cheapskates, who had overheard. Of course, my truthful, mirthful answer didn’t exempt me from taking off my shoes and half of the rest of what I was wearing. I did so without complaint.
But the conversation that followed was anything but routine.
I sought out a TSA supervisor and asked him to explain the are-you-75 question. He told me that new-ish rules at airports now exempt 75ers from having to take off shoes and jackets, regardless of gender, citizenship or anything else.
“So you’re essentially saying that no one who’s 75 is a threat?,” I said.
Only to himself,” said the supervisor.
That brought a guffaw from me. But also a question:
“Why 75? Why not 74? Or 73.6?”
The TSA supervisor — who looked wide awake, by the way — said that it was based on academic research that TSA had commissioned.
Evidently no one 75 or over had ever hijacked a plane or tried to conceal explosives in his shoes. So TSA decided that past would be prologue.
“But you’re talking about an entire population,” I pointed out to the supervisor. “There’s just as much variation among oldies as there is among millennials. OK, maybe not in terms of terrorism. But can you really be sure that everyone that age is on the level?”
The supervisor said no, of course not. But that’s why even 75-and-overs go through the basic security check.
“We’re not saying that 75-and-over get a free ride,” the supervisor said. “We’re saying that we’re playing the percentages. We don’t need to delay everyone else needlessly if the profile and the pattern are clear.”
The supervisor anticipated my next question very neatly.
“If you’re wondering why we don’t exempt babies who are too young to walk, that’s easy,” he said. “A terrorist who really means business will stop at nothing. He might use an infant to smuggle explosives through our stations.”
But the elderly seem to have hit a plateau in their lives, the man told me. “They aren’t as likely to hold radical views. They aren’t as likely to want to harm random people.”
So far, he said, the rule has met with a combination of yawns and smiles — yawns from younger folks, smiles from oldsters who are no longer inconvenienced.
Have any oldsters asked to be treated the same as everyone else? “Not as far as I know,” the supervisor said.
Have any oldsters expressed resentment at a government that thinks they’re too old to cause trouble? “Not that I know of,” the supervisor said.
Have any younger people asked to be exempted, too? “Every single day,” the supervisor told me.
“One guy we had here a few months ago, he couldn’t have been more than 30. He was screaming about equal rights and reverse age discrimination. Guess what we found in his bag? A loaded gun.”
It was getting close to flight time. I thanked the supervisor and jerked my bag onto my shoulder.
“Hey, you did that pretty easily,” he said. “You must be young.”
“I’m not 75 yet,” I replied. “But I’m getting closer by the day.”
