Taking Responsibility
Or How the TSA (of all people) Made Me Grow Up
Before you read this essay, I need you to watch this short bit on video:
I didn’t post this to make fun of the seriousness and gravity of the official documents required to be an adult in this nation. I post this to bring their importance, and the need to claim responsibility for our failures as well as our successes and to stop making lame excuses.
We were going to Vegas. As usual, my beloved husband chose to get tickets on the cheapest airlines imaginable. Let’s just say, we weren’t checking bags and my necessities were crammed into a smallish bag. In addition, I could only carry ONE carry on for free. My purse would incur an additional charge, so it had to be small enough to squeeze into the already cram full duffle bag.
I don’t say all this to excuse myself, but in order to have the smallish soft purse, I had to change wallets. My purse, which pushed to the least common denominators includes my wallet, my inhaler, chewing gum (my ears pop like Fourth of July on takeoffs and landings) and usually a lip gloss and comb. That’s REALLY minimal. If you don’t believe it, ask any woman.
So, I switched wallets for the sake of space. Sadly, I’m also part packrat, so I had my two years passed driver’s license in the older, smaller wallet. Being in a hurry, I didn’t look closely, just crammed everything in there, relieved I could fit shampoo and my brush in the duffle.
Have you ever tried to get through TSA security without appropriate identification? It’s not a picnic. On the one hand, it’s time consuming. I could’ve played petulant females and launched into hysterics, but all it would’ve done it make me infamous on some platform and frankly, I don’t want that. TSA agents are just doing their jobs. And frankly it is a pretty thankless job because of a general public that has been led to believe they are Federal drones on a power trip. Some may be, but more likely than not they have had to deal with some very obnoxious and uncooperative entitled passengers. They didn’t need me to make their day worse.
At DFW they had me fill out a form. The agent then called a number which posed a few questions that only I was supposed to know. It’s nice to know the Riddler has a retirement gig. But the fun wasn’t over yet! I had to turn over all my stuff, including my shoes for special handling. I got to go through the scanner and then get a pat down. At last, we were allowed to head to our gate at DFW.
And as if that wasn’t enough fun, I got to repeat the entire procedure for the return trip from Vegas to DFW, for which we had more than a little sufficient time. (Thanks to a Vegas flight delayed by a certain Big Yellow Airline) One fun thing is a flight agent tried to tag my carefully packed duffle as “too large” and made me squish it down into the “sizer”-I derived a certain amount of personal triumph in proving him wrong.
So what’s the point? The point is we, the American Public, have seen endless videos of people throwing toddler tantrums in fast food joints, at the airport, on airplanes, buses and trains. All of the emanates from a sense of entitled egotism and consummate immaturity. In life you get to make choices. You can choose to be an obnoxious brat or you can accept that it’s likely you screwed up and need to admit it. Accepting responsibility for the things that happen when it’s your fault should be a key factor in assessing who is really an Adult.
On a larger scale, how many incidents have we seen in the new are the result of the failure of individuals to admit they were wrong? We have entire government agencies doing the wrong thing and rather than correcting course, trying to cover it up. Many of those agencies are the same ones moaning to the media about staff cuts. You can get away with bad, even illegal, behavior for awhile, but sooner or later people get tired of it and instead of supporting you, they root for you to fail.
In the scheme of things, most people would rather have others on their side. This is why so many succumb to mob mentality and online likes over real interaction. Likes mean nothing. Anyone can click a “like” and not even register they agreed with you minutes down the road. But to obtain real support on a person to person level, you have to own up to your faults, even when it hurts. And you have to let the chips fall where they may. It might not always work out to your advantage, but in the long run, you will be a better person for it.