The Potty Mouth at the Table by Laurie Notaro

digging your way through the Kotex section of my suitcase,” I informed him.
    “I write science fiction,” he said, and suddenly gave me a little smile. “Can you help me get a book published?”
    I smiled back, zipped the suitcase up as best I could, and then yanked it off the table.
    “Nope,” I said as I walked away.

    I t was clear that things hadn’t changed—the Eugene TSA was still taking things very, very seriously, even more so with the new naked machine. I had been in line for at least twenty minutes and had barely moved, and once I paid attention to what was going on in front of me, I understood why.
    There were children lined up at the naked machine; many, many children. Most of them looked to be middle-school aged, about fifteen to twenty of them, accompanied by three chaperones. All of them were deaf, or had hearing aids that were setting off the machine, and the TSA was in something of a tizzy. They were shouting to the kids to step into the machine and put their hands up for the imaging to take place, but it was all going horribly wrong. As a result, some of the kids were getting frisked and others stood confused in front of the machine as the TSA haplessly shouted directions. It was a mess. And time was ticking.
    The security line was now incredibly long, and by the time I got even close to the machine, I had only twenty minutes until takeoff. I tossed my suitcase on the conveyor belt,and this time (I had learned my lesson), as the fiber packets were resting in my purse. I took off my shoes and waited next in line to be blasted by naked rays.
    The guy in front of me passed through without a hitch, and I was glad; I barely had enough time to run to the gate and catch my flight. When the TSA agent called “Next!” I stepped into the machine and put my feet in the designated space and held my hands up when I was instructed to. I did not even breathe, not wanting to cause the least bit of delay.
    When I exited the machine, I began to walk over to fetch my suitcase, but the agent stopped me.
    “Female!” he yelled, and in a minute, a woman in a ponytail and wearing polyester pants came up to me and asked me to spread my arms.
    Shit , I thought.
    “Do you have any metal in your body?” she asked me, to which I answered no.
    “Are you sure, ma’am?” she said sternly, clearly not believing me. “There seems to be some metal in your torso.”
    “Um, no,” I said, shaking my head. “My underwire bra, maybe?”
    “This appears to be in the rib area,” she informed me as she started patting me around my midsection.
    “I don’t have a metal rib,” I assured her.
    “And in the left hip? What do you have there?”
    “Pardon me?” I asked as she continued to pat. “Nothing. I have a real hip. I have no metal in my body.”
    “That’s not what the scan says,” the agent replied, patting down my boobs with the backs of her hands.
    “I don’t have metal in my body,” I reiterated. “I have real ribs and an arthritic hip.”
    “Stand with your feet apart, please,” the woman said.
    I just wanted this to move along. I positioned my feet on the yellow footprints on the rubber mat.
    And then it happened. Her hand was patting my ass, and then, suddenly, it was in my crotch.
    I turned my head suddenly, trying to determine if that had really happened. IN my crotch, like I need to be married to you in my crotch . Or like you’d better have a degree from a medical school in the United States in my crotch . Like I’m having a baby in the back of a cab, I didn’t even know I was pregnant and you’re the only one who can help me, mister, in my crotch . But not like you’re a lady with two semesters of community college, you have a scrunchie in your hair and you think I am lying about having a metal rib in my crotch . Because that kind of in my crotch is not cool. It is not cool with me. I’ve been frisked before, the full pat down, several times, in fact, and this was different. This