TSA, The Farmer, and The Pocket Knife

I saw on the news this morning where the TSA was going to start allowing pocket knives back on planes for the first time since 911. This brings to mind a funny story of mine from a few years ago.

My wife and I were going to visit her brothers in New York City for the first time. One moved there to work in the movie/tv business and the other is a math professor. We fully intended to get to the airport in plenty of time...but my wife has never been known for being prompt. The check-in line was long and by the time we got all the way to check our luggage we were told we would have to let all of it be carry on.

Now I know that doesn't sound like a problem at first, but we didn't pack accordingly. My wife had all of her shampoo and other "girlie stuff" in bigger than the tiny bottles that were allowed as carry on. Then there was my problem. The knife.

Town knife

This is my town knife. Yes, I said town knife, meaning I have a farm knife, and plenty of other ones. This isn't as crazy as you might think. I do many dirty chores, to say the least, with my farm knife and I don't want to use it to cut up an apple, for instance.

The knife was in the bag meant to be checked. It was a Christmas gift and I had no plan of chucking it in the trash as my wife did with her stuff so we could race down the hallway to board the plane. A security officer told me to go to a travel agent who might be able to help. For the low price of $10 the travel agent put my town knife in a sealed envelope in her desk until I came back to claim it. Big sigh of relief.

I made the dash back down the hallway to catch up with my wife who had already been informed our plane was closed for boarding. There was actually no need to discard anything because we could check the luggage for a later flight. Arggh!

We decided to just do carry on and let it be. NYC was great, thanks to my brother-in-laws, even if I kept checking my empty pocket most of the time we were there. Will I bring a knife on a plane under the new TSA rules? I probably will not tempt fate and leave my good friend at home and instead work on getting my wife to the airport on time!