Good gosh, now they’re thinking of bringing TSA to AMTRAK. For those who aren’t familiar with acronyms, that’s the Transportation Security Administration to American Track. So to be precise, some Congress people want the dreaded TSA found at airports to search AMTRAK passengers as well, which is quite an alarming prospect.
It apparently stems from writings found in Osama bin Laden’s hideout, titled “The Girls of AMTRAK.” Being a deeply religious man he was only interested in the AMTRAK portion of the article, disregarding the railroad girls entirely. No doubt he was looking past the comely models to see what in the background was worth blowing up. He was calculating the amount of TNT required to blow Glacier Peak to smithereens along with 10,000 tourists when his four wives walked in, forcing him to stash the AMTRAK guide under his bed and quickly open the Quran.
This apparent terrorist interest in AMTRAK quickly set TSA jaws flapping on cable news channels, and before we knew it our representatives in Congress were talking about eliminating freedom of travel from trains, as well as airplanes. The timing couldn’t be worse because next month we’ve got AMTRAK tickets from Everett to Washington, D.C., and the passenger list includes our 2-year-old grandson who happens to be a bubble terrorist. That in part is why we chose not to fly. We knew the crack TSA agents would find his bubble gun, either through a full-diaper search or an X-ray, and the little guy would be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay without a trial. He might emerge 20 years later but by then he would be an angry young man, figuring out how to blow a bubble large enough to encircle all of New York City and what the damage would be when he popped it with his finger. Millions of New Yorkers would get wet and soapy and the slippery streets would cause thousands of people to fall and numerous traffic accidents. Thoughts like this keep TSA agents awake at night, fearful that somewhere out there is someone planning on using a bubble of mass destruction.
That would be our grandson, who carries his battery-powered bubble gun around like Marshal Dillon, ready in a split second to enshroud anyone in a cloud of bubbles. It shoots six bubbles at a time in rapid succession, and he could bubbleize six TSA agents in a matter of seconds.
Right now it’s not illegal to shoot bubbles at the brakeman, porter, fireman and engineer, but if TSA has it way, our grandson will never get his bubble gun on the train. What then are we supposed to do with him on a 63-hour trip? The though of being stuck on a train with a bored 2-year-old is enough to blow our minds.
