Search

Last night RantWoman had to go to a public hearing with representatives of the King County council about her transit-related public participation project. RantWoman will calendar one more public hearing about the topic and the option down the line of contacting the transit planners she has been interacting with for months about the results of what gets implemented. At the moment though RantWoman is thinking about one vexation of her bus-addicted lifestyle: search or more precisely the things that wind up being a real pain because RantWoman has no car in which to leave things not traditionally viewed favorably during search.

Lots of public buildings in this day and age have a search with x-ray machines, metal detectors of various configurations, and patient but frequently humor-challenged public servants operating the whole apparatus. RantWoman knows that there is really good historical reason to have such a procedure in some places. For instance RantWoman still says a silent prayer every time she goes in one entry to the King County courthouse because of a case years ago when an estranged husband shot his wife and two of her friends outside a courtroom before a hearing. RantWoman also generally tries hard to contain her biting wit, her ill-behaved white cane, and her general demeanor to minimize hassles; this is especially essential if one happens also to be carrying signs or other indicators of vigorous public participation, not the case here. RantWoman's effort in these realms does not reckon with either table knives or an occasional need for a pocket knife.

The table knife story goes like this. Once upon a time, RantWoman baked some kind of quickbread to take to a potluck. For some reason, even though RantWoman knew the place where thepotluck occurred had silverware, RantWoman brought a table knife for her quick bread. The quick bread was munched enthusiastically, but RantWoman put the table knife back in the plastic bag and threw the plastic bag into one of her bags. RantWoman completely forgot about the table knife until it turned up on a search x-ray. Since RantWoman had no car to take the offending item back to, and storage lockers are also incompatible with someone's security sensibilities she had to surrender the offending potential weapon. RantWoman found this especially grating since she had just ridden downtown on a bus watching a kid in a seat opposite her flick a switchblade every other second all the way downtown.

The pocket knife story is even more vexing and pathetic but is to be saved for its own entry. Suffice it to say that RantWoman has gotten good at, for example, slicing apples with plastic knives because actually maintaining ownership of a pocket knife or at least a pocket knife RantWoman might have available in the course of a day away from home is completely unrealistic.

RantWoman was thinking of all these issues while getting ready to go to yesterday's hearing. In anticipation of search vexations, RantWoman even cleaned out a bunch of older mail and unneeded paper, though no weapons out of her bags. The hearing was set to begin after normal business hours. RantWoman arrived off a bus and just passed through the metal detector in search of a human.

RantWoman looked around and around and then proceeded to the elevator where she was finally stopped by a metal-detector wielding public servant in a low-key uniform. Public servant barely glanced at RantWoman's bags: he probably figured even if there were anything dangerous inside, RantWoman might not be able to find it in a timely way. RantWoman got a prefunctory wave of the metal detector and then the public servant lost interest because someone else showed up needing at least token attention. In other words, RantWoman's pre-event fretting about the search was all completely for naught. RantWoman supposes she could have worse problems, but anyway enough!