Returning to Hong Kong from New York yesterday, it was my first time to go through those super special scanning machines that the TSA has in U.S. airports now.  I did the whole prep thing – emptying out my pockets, taking off my jacket, shoes and belt, and stepped into that machine to be scanned.

When I stepped out, for a moment they didn’t say a word to me so I just stood there.  Then one of the agents asked me where my stuff was and I pointed over to the belt.  He called out, “We’ve got a RPD here.”  RPD? WTF?

I glanced back at the scanning machine’s screen and saw that on the little cartoony outline figure, there was a little yellow box right over my dick.  I followed the agents over to the examination room and asked, “RPD? Random Pat Down?”  And one guy said to me, “There’s nothing random about this, you set off an alarm in the machine.”

So I entered the tiny room with two agents.  They asked me if I had any medical devices or metal hidden away.  Yes, it’s true, I was definitely thinking Spinal Tap here, but there were no vegetables wrapped in foil in my pants. The guy explained that it was my dick that set off the alarm (well, he may not have used those exact words).  ”Yes, because it’s so large!”  Yeah, I know, I couldn’t help myself, and I immediately apologized for that.  Fortunately the guy had a sense of humor.

I wondered if I would have to strip down but the guy explained to me, in a lot of unnecessary detail, how he was going to go about patting me down.  He asked if any parts of my body were sensitive.  ”All of them!”  I suppose he’s used to people yelling and screaming at him over this sort of thing.  Me, in situations like this, I always remember Lenny Bruce’s line about how people confuse Authority with Those Who Have Authority Vested In Them.  Really, what was I gonna do?  At that point the guy can’t give me a “pass” and if I gave him a hard time, he could have given me a much harder time in return.  The guy’s just doing his job (and doing a proper job of it as far as I could tell) so even if my crummy jokes weren’t that funny, at least I wasn’t making his life difficult.

So he put on the blue rubber gloves and patted and rubbed me all over the place.  When he finished, I had to wait until someone checked the gloves for any residue.  And then I was free to go.  I told him my gf would probably get a kick out of hearing how my balls set off an alarm.

Anyway, it’s nice to be home.