I'm a Stranger Here Myself Read Online Free Page B

than it would be correct to say that the British love queuing. These things are done not with enthusiasm or affection but out of a more or less instinctive recognition that these are useful ways of helping to achieve and maintain a civilized and orderly society.
    Generally this is a very good thing. There are times, I have to say, when a little Teutonic order wouldn’t go amiss in England—for instance, when people take two spaces in a parking lot because they can’t be bothered to park correctly (the one offense for which, if I may speak freely here, I would support capital punishment).
    Sometimes, however, the American devotion to order goes too far. Our local public swimming pool, for example, has twenty-seven written rules—twenty-seven!—of which my favorite is “One Bounce Per Dive on Diving Board.” And they’re enforced.
    What is frustrating is that it seldom matters whether these rules make any sense or not. A year or so ago, as a way of dealing with the increased threat of terrorism, America’s airlines began requiring passengers to present photographic identification when checking in for a flight. The first I heard of this was when I showed up to catch a plane at an airport 120 miles from my home.
    “I need to see some picture ID,” said the clerk, who had the charm and boundless motivation you would expect to find in someone whose primary employment perk is a nylon tie.
    “Really? I don’t think I have any,” I said and began patting my pockets, as if that would make a difference, and then pulling cards from my wallet. I had all kinds of identification—library card, credit cards, social security card, health insurance card, airline ticket—all with my name on them, but nothing with a picture. Finally, at the back of the wallet I found an old Iowa driver’s license that I had forgotten I even had.
    “This is expired,” he sniffed.
    “Then I won’t ask to drive the plane,” I replied.
    “Anyway, it’s fifteen years old. I need something more up to date.”
    I sighed and rooted through my belongings. Finally it occurred to me that I was carrying one of my books with my picture on the jacket. I handed it to him proudly and with some relief.
    He looked at the book and then hard at me and then at a printed list. “That’s not on our list of Permissible Visual Cognitive Imagings,” he said, or something similarly vacuous.
    “I’m sure it isn’t, but it’s still me. It couldn’t
be
more me.” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to him. “Are you seriously suggesting that I had this book specially printed so I could sneak on to a flight to Buffalo?”
    He stared hard at me for another minute, then called in for consultation another clerk. They conferred and summoned a third party. Eventually we ended up with a crowd scene involving three check-in clerks, their supervisor, the supervisor’s surpervisor, two baggage handlers, several inquisitive bystanders straining to get a better view, and a guy selling jewelry out of an aluminum case. My flight was due to take off in minutes and froth was starting to form at the corners of my mouth. “What is the point of all this anyway?” I said to the head supervisor. “Why do you need a picture ID?”
    “FAA rule,” he said, staring unhappily at my book, my invalid driver’s license, and the list of permissible photo options.
    “But
why
is it the rule? Do you honestly believe that you are going to thwart a terrorist by requiring him to show you a laminated photograph of himself? Do you think a person who could plan and execute a sophisticated hijacking or other illegal airborne event would be unable to contrive some form of convincing artificial identification? Has it occurred to you that it might be more productive, vis-à-vis terrorism, if you employed someone who was actually awake, and perhaps with an IQ above that of a small mollusk, to monitor the TV screens on your X-ray machines?” I may not have said all this in exactly those words,