New York Airport || And My Body Search!

8 min readJan 29, 2022

New York Airport|| And My Body Search!

Well, we’re on our way to the New York airport. With everything going on with this quarantine, it’s hard to have a routine. Never the less, here we go to the New York airport. Everyone knows most people don’t fly in this quarantine, unless it’s necessary. In our case, it was. So we made the best of it and made efforts to be flexible along the way to the New York airport. Adapting to every situation as it would come up in order to get through the trying times of travelling during quarantine. Ok then, just so we could leave and arrive. Everything went well on the way back. We were told that we would have to go through a 21-day quarantine in an appointed hotel. If you haven’t heard that yet, you can check out that article here.

If you are an ordinary person living in ordinary life, you won’t look forward to 21 days in quarantine that’s not in your own home. It’s a bit of a challenge. So knowing that, we did everything we could to get as comfortable as possible, and put ourselves in the right mindset. So that when we did land, we hoped that the 21-day quarantine wouldn’t be so bad. We packed very lightly and didn’t buy much, so we wouldn’t have to worry about luggage being lost or any such thing. Well, that part worked out great, but what we didn’t expect was something else!!!

Same Routine At The New York Airport

Now before we get into that, it is fair to mention that before this trip; I have travelled for about 25-years and have seen a few airports in my day. So I wasn’t in for any surprises. I was quite adaptable to being in different airports in different countries. Considering I was in my sister town of New York, I didn’t flinch. Also, I thought, however it worked out would be fine, even with the list of quarantine requirements.

Well, knowing that we were going into quarantine, we were told to check all the governmental websites as things could change from day to day. I was quite eager to check every detail before I left. This is a routine for mine, anyway. There wasn’t anything special to watch out for other than a few documents here and there. So I proceeded in a usual fashion and I thought I did everything that I needed to do.

Maybe I didn’t, thinking back now. When I travel, I don’t wear lots of jewelry. I don’t wear bangle things. And I try not to bring a lot of technical equipment, because it is too much for me to carry. So I just brought my simple laptop. It seemed simple enough, so why did I end up getting a body search? What on earth did I do differently after 25-years of travelling?

I’ve never had to go through a body search before. When I travelled during the first weekend of September 11, they asked me to take off my shoes. But that was it. So what was different? Please let me tell you…

New York Airport Positive Inspirational Flight

Because we were expecting our 21 days in quarantine after we arrived, I did one thing, only one thing differently. This is something I also never do when I travel. You see when I travel always wear very comfortable clothes. This flight was over 17 hours long. I always wear a very comfortable type of lounge wear suit. You know, the kind for jogging or sleeping with an elastic hidden waist. If you know what, I mean.

For me, it’s not the time to be wearing high heels and slinky dresses: it’s just not practical on flights. Easy to sleep in, that was my idea. Well, this time I was preparing what I was going to wear the next morning, and I decided not to wear my comfortable jogging suit. My tried-and-true, comfortable jogging suit that I always wear for travel. It has served me well over the years. No, this time I had a novel idea.

I thought since I was travelling for so long I should wear something that was much more pretty, so I could have more of a positive inspirational feeling. Such a harmless idea. So I thought, well, I’ll just choose something else that’s comfortable. And besides, it’s not like there’s going to be in any fashion show on the airplane, is it?

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Going Through The New York Airport Checkpoints

Arriving at the New York airport and I won’t mention exactly which one😆 We started the routine of going through the basic checkpoints and of showing the passport etc. That was all quite fine as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary, until we got to the last checkpoint where we had to go through the metal detectors. Sure enough, the metal detector starting ringing like I had just won the lottery. I could not understand what was happening. Suddenly two female officers appeared next to me and said, please come off to the side Mam. And I thought, what is this? Well, after waiting there a few minutes not knowing what was going on the female officer came over to me and said, I’m sorry Mam I will have to make an upper body search.

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Would you like to do that here in the open, or would you like to go to the private room? And I just thought, body search, you Wanna Touch Me? Gosh! At that moment about a million thoughts went through my head in a split second. And then I thought, why body search me? I didn’t do anything wrong? I’m just a nice lady trying to get on the plane. So I looked at the officer and I asked, why do you have to give me a body search, and what is this all about? Well, in all fairness, I must say, there must be a power above that sent the nicest female officer to me.

Because she looked at me and said, Mam I’m sure it’s nothing, but our scanners have detected metal on you. So it’s a matter of procedure. Again my mind started racing. What kind of metal? I don’t have any metal! I’m just a simple lady trying to get on an airplane. Is this some kind of joke? Someone trying to be funny? Is there some secret camera around? These thoughts went through my head in a split second, all the while the female officer patiently stood there, waiting for an answer. Noticing the very confused look on my face she’s so tactfully leaned towards me and said, I’m sure it’s nothing, but the shirt you’re wearing seems to have metal in it.😲

Well, at that moment it hit me, I looked down at the shirt I was wearing. Everything she said made sense. As you will see from the above photo, I was wearing what I thought was a shirt with plastic sparkles. Unknown to me, that those sparkles were metal, and that metal showed up on the security scanner. Meanwhile, the question was still the same, do you want to have your search here in the open or do you prefer to go to the private room? I felt scenes of Perry Mason and Columbo come into my mind. A feeling of walking down this dark long hallway and entering an empty room with a bunch of strangers all looking at me. This gave me such an eerie feeling that I quickly answered the female officer, thank you I prefer to do it here in the open.

What’s The Moral Of This Story?

Well, certainly I would have preferred a third choice, but since there was none, I choose to give thanks from above for the kind female officer looking at me. As she clearly saw my uneasiness about the whole situation, to which she replied gently, it’s ok Mam, it’s just a matter of procedure, and the whole thing was over within a matter of a minute or two. I really thank that female officer for her high level of understanding. It’s so nice when you come across people who use common sense. It really makes life so much better for all of us. So what’s the moral of the story here?

If you feel like this quarantine stuff is too much to handle…then you can reach out and anonymously talk with a qualified therapist, by clicking ad here for more information.

There’s two points here. Even though I wore a comfortable shirt for travel, I will suggest anyone travelling to be very careful not to wear anything with any type of sparkles or glitter. Since you really have no way of telling what material they are made from. Next time I travel I will double check, to be sure that my clothes don’t have of any kind of adornments on them. And the second point is, as the world famous song says, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. 😉 Stay safe and safe travels, everyone!

Have you experienced an airport body search?

What did you think of it?

Let’s share in the comments below…