Courtesy of TSA, I have truly learned what "by the book" means. The Kansas City airport has no bathrooms inside the security checkpoint. That's right, folks, if you need to pee, you'd best be doing it before you go to the gate area, lest you find yourself in my position.
Thankfully, because I had already been through the security checkpoint, my coat and bag were not with me, and I just had my purse. Unburdened as I was, I offered to help the family in front of me. They were traveling with 2 children small enough to both be in strollers, so I offered to fold up one of the strollers while Mom packed all the assorted bags onto the belt, took off her shoes, etc. (Zoe, who looked like she was about 18 months, helpfully removed her own shoes. And socks.) We load all their stuff up on the belt, and it's all good, right? Wrong. First, Dad sets off the metal detector. And, he's holding the baby. So, both he and the baby go off to get wanded.
Then, Mom and Zoe go through the detector. But now Mom is the only one there to take things off the belt, so she puts Zoe down. Grabbing her chance at freedom, she runs back through the metal detector. So, Mom puts everything down to go grab her. "I'm sorry, ma'am, you have to stay on this side." So, she's calling to Zoe, trying to convince her to come back, and as you would expect, Zoe's ignoring her, so I pick Zoe up, and walk through.
BEEP! Oops. In all the excitement, I forgot to take off my belt. So, I move to step back, remove my belt, then walk through again. "I'm sorry, ma'am, you'll have to go over there to get scanned." Or I could just take off my belt..... No, no, that can't happen. So, fine. I try to hand off Zoe to Mom. Nope, no can do, this insidious baby terrorism has got to be stopped, and Zoe must be scanned, too. (Luckily for us all, Zoe has reacted fairly well to finding herself in a strange woman's arms, unable to go to Mom.)
But this was no simple wanding, identifying my belt as the problem, then sending me on my way. No, it was necessary for me to sit down, so they could check the bottoms of my feet. I had to unbuckle my belt, then pull it away from my clothing. Since I was wearing jeans, I had to turn down the waistband to my jeans, to confirm that, yes, the metal setting off the wand was my jeans button, and not the bullet I had hidden behind it. Then, lets rescan my arms, in case I had cleverly transfered something from my belt to my hands when I had undone it. A full two minutes later, Zoe and I were confirmed clean, and allowed to get on our way.
The worst part of it all? Zoe's family was making 2 connections before they reached their destination.