When you travel: You must suspend Real Time. You are on a Travel Time.
Airports are lonely, impatient and irritable affairs. They are one off destinations. Intermediate transit points between home and away. We all have to use them to get where we want to go but never want to stay longer than we absolutely need to.
There is a shared and futile desire to “do the airport” on our time rather than on their time. But to be honest, airport transit from car side to planeside as always been a fallacy.
Instead, increasingly long lines and indeterminable wait times at a series of intermediary check points are the norm.
The efficacy of the majority of these checkpoints can undoubtedly be improved but some, such as clearing customs and security are of utmost importance and need to be taking with a degree of patience.
Two weeks ago I returned home at midnight to Newark International Airport after spending a year abroad in Istanbul, Turkey as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.
Traveling often I have come to enjoy the initial albeit brusque “Welcome Back” given by the Homeland Security Officer as he/she stamps me back into the country.
This time however, instead of my anticipated homecoming, I got a scrutinizing second look, a double check of my passport and a forceful, curt command to “follow me.”
Much to the chagrin of the weary travelers waiting in the long line behind me, the Homeland Security Officer escorted me into the backroom of the Homeland Security Office.
As he filed away my passport he told me to sit down and left without another word.
While waiting less than patiently the twenty minutes for my name to be called, there was a Polish woman being questioned via a translator about over staying her tourist visa and another man being asked about a prior arrest.
Note, in retelling this story I could have used terms interrogated and grilled to convey the actions of the Homeland Security Force.
They certainly could have been construed as such, but description is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, tired, travel worn passengers not privileged to the full story of their detainment being delayed at midnight. Not an ideal situation of which to paint a rosy and fond memory.
Upon being called, the on duty officer asked what I had been doing abroad for the entire year. I explained that as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar I had been learning Turkish and performing community service projects in Istanbul, Turkey.
Clearing up this misapprehension I was stamped back into the US without any further ado. Curiosity getting the best of me, I paused, turned and asked the office, why, even though I was an American citizen, returning home had been stopped.
We were just doing our job he responded. Being gone for an entire year came up as irregular and unique in our system and we wanted to make sure that everything was legitimate.
That, as I walked out, was a fair enough reason and I thanked him for it.
Twenty minutes is twenty minutes and we have all whiled away countless hours of our lives without a second thought. However, once at the airport, whether running to catch a flight or see loved one’s, taking away twenty minutes of our time to becomes a personal affront.
We ask, rather expect Homeland Security to keep us safe at all time and from every possible threat and yet, when our safety inconveniences our lives, we are the first to cry foul. Safety and Efficiency are not mutually exclusive but they can only be equated with a healthy degree of patience.
