A long due update

Here's a long due update, after two semesters of school.
Here I am at Bob Hope airport, a junior in college. I just got in trouble for leaving a $20 air-soft pistol with only 140 fps in my box which I originally intended to check with my luggage, not bring as a carry-on.
What happened was that last night I packed a lamp and some assorted junk that I wanted to keep at home in the best box I could find, which was unfortunately very small. Well after I packed that, I found some other things that I wanted to bring home and didn’t need at college and realized I should pack the lamp in my clothes so it didn’t break.
One thing I found was my bag of air-soft stuff. So, of course as soon as I took my box of assorted junk to get checked at the airport and check it in with my suitcase I forget that I have this packed and assume I have my lamp packed inside instead of my air-soft junk. So then as I’m checking my luggage outside, the guy tells me that they won’t be liable for what happens to the box and that I can take it with me on the airplane. Of course dumb me starts thinking that, “well, they’re not afraid of breaking everything in this box I’d really like to see my working lamp survive the trip, and so I should bring it with me.” So I take it with me.
Of course once they see this gun thing in the x-ray scanner, they stop the box and pop it open with me okaying it all the way since I figured there being all this random junk they would want to look inside and expected it. Then they find that, and ask me what it is, and I realize what it is, and tell them they can trash it they decide that we should wait a little longer, so we wait like 15-20 minutes. Granted, it’s probably not that long, but the TSA security guy brings over the cops and they look at it and stuff.
Then after writing all kinds of things on a piece of paper in his illegible strange writing after looking at my driver’s license, the little Mexican man with his strong accent and face that has probably not cracked a smile in several weeks, tells me: “it ees your luchky day de police are not going to press charges”. I was very thankful, but started wondering how the heck the police are going to press charges on me for carrying a plastic toy gun that can’t even break your skin.
The frustrating thing to me was that the stupid TSA security guy wasn’t smart enough even recognize what kind of weapon toy this was, considering the fact that it is a widely known sport and is available at almost every wal-mart store for as cheap as $10. Shouldn’t the security for an airport be well enough educated to recognize the difference between a clear plastic toy and a real killing utensil. Obviously not. Whatever, this is LA.
Well, this is longer than I thought, so I’m going to do more update next post. Now I’m in the plane waiting for the boarding to cease and the flying to begin. Home, here I come.
Written at 6:51pm, May 14th, 2008

Till next post.
Your faithful typer,
Yokanchi