I swear to God, I never did it. Never once. But, I’m more than happy to tell on Danny, Lee and Cisco. When we were in the seventh grade those clever and nefarious characters all harassed the girls by stealthily placing little mirrors on the classroom floor with the idea of getting a glimpse up their dresses. I admit to nothing except that, on those very rare occasions when a girl was actually standing over one of those mirrors, I looked. The angle was never right, though. All I ever saw was Javier’s butt planted in the seat two desks over.
If there’s anything a junior high boy really wants to do, it’s see up a girl’s dress. Or down her dress. Teenage boys too. I don’t imagine there’s a guy alive who at one time or another hasn’t stood beside a seated girl and peered down her blouse. There was hardly a day in high school when I didn’t find some reason to be loitering around Mary Ann’s desk, sometimes behind her desk, sneaking a peek over her shoulder.
The widespread interest in feminine beauty made X-Ray Specs, a novelty product marketed by an outfit ironically named Honor House Products, one of the most sought after hi-tech items of the 1940s-60s. Equipped with a pair of X-Ray Specs, any fellow with an eye for the sublime could have a season pass to life’s rich pageant, a private viewing of God’s finest artistry. If only they’d worked, it would have been the best buck a guy ever spent.
This is the part where I’m supposed to say that most of us guys outgrew that sort of thing by the time we were out of our teens. We grew up, matured and stopped acting like Danny, Lee and Cisco back in junior high. I could say that, but it would be a lie. We didn’t. At least, I haven’t. I still look down Mary Ann’s blouse every chance I get.
Here’s the thing. Back in high school, I was fine with Billy or Bob sidling up to Becky’s desk or Donna’s. I had a different attitude about guys rubberneckin’ around Mary Ann. Still do. I don’t give a damn whether they work for the federal government or not.
I strongly support transportation security. I don’t want bad guys with bombs or box cutters getting on airplanes. On the other hand, I don’t want TSA meatheads using their new and improved, super power X-Ray Specs on my wife… or mother… or anybody else. I’m not too keen on wagging my dangly bits before petty government officials either.
Have you seen these things? I mean, seen the images these full body scan machines produce? Well, have a look at the video (to the right). The videos are doctored to accommodate the needs of network television, but you’ll get the idea.
“Not to worry,” the TSA tells us. “Not everyone in the airport will be able to see under your wife’s clothes. Just select government officers.” Wow, that’s comforting. In this market driven atmosphere I’d have expected a live feed of scan images to be available on closed circuit pay-per-view throughout the airport. Maybe streamed over the net to paid subscribers. Capitalism.
“To protect your privacy, the software that controls the scanning automatically blurs the face so that the person cannot be recognized by the officer viewing the scan images.” That’s a comfort. It wasn’t my wife’s face that I was concerned about.
“Once the passenger steps out of the scanning booth, all of the scan images are gone forever. The technology provides no way to save, transmit or print the images. It’s all completely safe.”
Well, there it is. The government wouldn’t lie. Not about weapons of mass destruction, not about the way we treat prisoners, and certainly not about naked pictures of my wife or yours. The photos won’t be stored anywhere, won’t turn up on the Internet, and you can be sure that Danny, Lee and Cisco won’t be flipping through a gallery of the morning’s best snapshots on their lunch break. As far as I know, they don’t work for TSA.
Enough is enough. We’ve all been led to believe that there are some clever guys and gals working over at Homeland Security. Surely, they can think of some way to keep terrorists off airplanes without taking wirecutters to Mandi’s nipple rings or subjecting Heather to the Porn-O-Scan.
There comes a time to balk, a time to just say “No.”
If the price of a tomato and half-gallon of milk included allowing a Kroger employee to cop a feel, we’d all be boycotting Kroger. I’m boycotting air travel until a ticket to Dallas no longer requires letting Officer Don get to second base with my wife.
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I always wondered if those x-ray specs worked. I never believed they worked, but I wasn’t sure. A friend of my brother had a pair that he would use to embarrass me by putting them on when I came in a room. I think they were just trying to get rid of me.