Appreciations (13) – Pacemaker pat downs please

Appreciations (13) – Pacemaker pat downs please

Torrey Orton

September 22, 2009

 

Being handled by men and women in uniforms is a regular requirement of flying. As a six year pacemaker porter I am a consistent candidate for the handy works of security characters. In fact, failure to announce my package could result in seriously unpleasant heart effects from an addled onboard computer chip. So I announce myself over and over again (my only irritation these days being the 'shoes off and put them here please sir' routine; if I've thought to wear slip-ons its fine; otherwise it's an exercise routine on back of a touching one).

Another growthful submission event

I celebrate here the persistence and variety of pat-down execution approaches I've experienced. By implication I'm also celebrating my growth in submission without recrimination or rage. These both feelings I have in other situations of much slighter invasiveness and greater repetitiveness (think "How's your day been..so far" and similar inanities of contemporary customer service).

For those of you with security consciousness, be glad of those who do the work for us. But wonder at the variety of its execution. For example, about three years ago I came home from the Kimberley via Perth. After a couple days' stay I headed for the domestic terminal to close the trip loop and found a new approach to pat-downs. Not one, but two, security guys took me off to a closed room (first time anywhere in Oz for this) and one read a prepared statement from his employer seeking absolution from any damage they might do in the consummation of their duties, in triplicate for my signature.

Then one did the deed while the other assured I wasn't violated or something…which I wouldn't have been if it had all occurred in public as usual, but then this access of PC litigation-avoidant precaution only took 20 minutes paid time for two. They were a little surprised to hear that theirs was the only airport in OZ with such a rigorous process at that time. The standard process follows in its small variety below.

The two approaches – forehand and backhand

I can't tell by looking whether the next patting will be a backhanded or forehanded one. The difference in felt effects is slight, but it signals (this is correct usage here I think) a certain delicacy in security staff self-perception of their role. I sense now that forehanded is the more competent technique - that is, the more likely to find something if there is any to be had on my person. Forehanded pats are a naturally rounded stroke which covers more thoroughly than the backhanded's gliding pass. It is also heavier almost unavoidably. On the same hand (arrgh!), the first is more invasive, more personal, too.

Close encounters of a personal kind

On the whole it seems to me that I've had more genital tickles from men than women in a ratio of .25 of male patters to nil female. This shouldn't surprise. What does surprise is that it seems the little bit of testiculation that did occur happened most in countries where matters sexual are more circumspect than our own open land(s) – Dubai comes particularly to mind. I don't know what to make of this, acknowledging that the sample I 'm working with is statistically hopeless and scientifically under-investigated – i.e. bad research design. Maybe this will make a master's thesis worth of serious customer service ethnography for someone. A few pages in a work like Richard Sennett's Respect (2003) could result.

Checking my claim – do I really have one?

Interestingly, and again with no particular gender, age or ethnicity/country differentiation, some actively check that there's a swelling where the package should be kept. I usually indicate this as part of my announcing my unsuitability for electro-screening. The indication is a pointed sweep of my right hand towards my left shoulder, often with a finger or two sharpening the aim for the other's eyes. Most security operatives decline the offer, or do not seek it. However, see next for a twist in the tale.

Which is more real?

In one very recent case in Oz, I was asked for a card which was issued 6 years ago as proof that I had in my shoulder what could be felt open or backhandedly and which I offered to display by unbuttoning my shirt three buttons so it could be exposed to the light of day. Nope, just the card thanks, which I happen to carry as a partial defence against being MRIed at any time in the future (which would produce something more like an extrusion of the package or disconnection of its heart leads a strong chance).

No one had every looked at the card before. Just offer to display of a bit of upper chest really sufficed for most patters . This time the security officer was female and I had put her fingers on the package in question, yet still, 'the card please sir'. I would have thought the touch as close to certainty as practically needed, but…maybe people doubt their senses so often these days that the second most basic one is uncredible. Or, she had just read a story about micro quantities of Semtex which could be stored in pacemakers for computer activation at predetermined time, having been installed years earlier by agents of foreign powers….etc., etc., etc. Better than shoe bombs, eh?

 

I wouldn't want to have to make a living doing such work, would you? Imagine the sample of the gen pub you would have to be up close and personal with – predominantly male I think, but not solely. And this has been fun to write, since it is conceptually straightforward and pleasantly demanding descriptively, with room for slight linguistic adventures. Enjoy, as they say.