What Is It With Me and The Feds?

If you go to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in New Haven and they hold off your clearance, because, they say, your fingerprint pictures were, “not clear enough” and therefore the FBI must do a “background check,” it’s annoying, but not particularly disturbing.

I said to the woman on the phone, who gave me this information,  “But I am eighty years old and I don’t have any background.”

This is not strictly true. During my civil rights activist years in the 1970s, I, and a few friends, raised some money to buy a printing machine for the Toledo, Ohio chapter of the Black Panthers—there were eight of them and I knew them all. Some months later, the FBI sent two “Suits” to the First National Bank to question my husband about his wife’s “association” with the Panthers.

He was pretty mad when he came home. Me? I was furious.  Wait a minute! The FBI called on you about me? They didn’t come to me directly?  If they want to know about me, they can ask me!

Ah. Those were the days. But if we ask Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, the days haven’t changed all that much. “Men are simple creatures,” Cotton is quoted as saying. “It doesn’t take much to please us. The problem is women.” I think my former husband would have agreed with the senator.

My national TSA clearance hanging in abeyance, my next stop is at JFK with my daughter, who has already achieved Global Entry clearance and knows the ropes. I have filled out all the necessary data online and, armed with appropriate ID etc., I’m ready for my 9:00 AM appointment before we catch a plane to California.

 I am invited into the agent’s office by myself and everything goes smoothly until the very nice woman asks me to put my hands on the glass plate for the fingerprinting, which I do.

She looks puzzled and presses my hand down with hers. A couple of picture failures later, she gives me some white cream and instructs me to rub it thoroughly over all of my fingertips. I have on too much hand lotion? Something is clearly amiss.

We try again. No luck. “What is going on?” I ask. She smiles and rises, “I am going to get your daughter.”

My daughter? Why? I study my fingers.

She comes back with Taylor and explains to her, as if I were not sitting there, that I do not have photographable prints.  Therefore, although I will be given international clearance, when I am re-entering the country, and I slide my passport into the Trusted Traveler slot, I will receive a slip of paper with my info covered by a big black X. This, she tells Taylor, I must hand to the TSA agent nearby and then he will do something with that and I will be cleared. She then shows Taylor a sample X-marked paper.

“I don’t have fingerprints? Everyone has fingerprints,” I say. I am still incredulous.

“It happens.” She shrugs.

I do not like the look of the sample paper with the thick, black X crisscrossing it and I am beginning to wonder why she is telling my daughter all this since I am the one with the no fingerprint problem. It appears that not only do I not have visible fingerprints, but that I am invisible in other ways as well.

 What is it with federal agents? Once it was the infuriating uncontrollable-radical-wife-thing and now it’s the insulting blurred-out-incompetent-old-lady thing?

Something in me twitches and I can’t help myself. Holding out my hands, palms up, I say with a smile, “I had my fingerprints rubbed out when I was an international spy."

Whoops! Taylor kicks my leg under the table and the woman’s face freezes. I, however, am really laughing.

Turbulence And Clearance

I have achieved TSA—Transportation Security Administration—clearance. This sounds like a big deal but legally it isn’t. Not compared to the sweeping, national and international travel privilege of Global Entry clearance, but that can only be accomplished by an appointment made at JFK or Logan Airport –where I am never.

I am at JFK sometimes, doggedly headed for a departing plane and I cannot conceive of, at the same time, including an appointment for ID photos, Social Security checks, fingerprinting—all five of them—plus a questionnaire as to my legal/illegal behavior.

So last week friends and I went to the nearby New Haven office to get ourselves cleared for shorter TSA security lines and no shoe removal while traveling within the United States. It seemed better than nothing.

Appointments were not available until February so we took a chance and were walk-ins. And it worked! Having pre-enrolled online, we had already answered the questions as to passport numbers, the permanence of our residence, our lack of prison experience or arrests for various violations. (If we answered “yes” to the prison-related questions, the form politely suggested that we not apply for clearance.)

Luckily for us, some people were no shows and the three of us were fitted into the schedule and processed in two hours.

I was called first in our group and immediately ran into complications. For example, I have had passports under three different names. (Men do not have to deal with this issue.)

In addition, years ago I broke the little finger of my left hand during a sailing race in the UK and it has never completely realigned itself with the other four fingers. To get it to behave properly for the fingerprinting, I had to force it in and against my fourth finger and then press it down hard to straighten it onto the lighted glass plate.

I had handed over all my vital information; I had answered multitudinous questions and I had checked that everything printed out on the huge computer screen in front of me was correct, when,  the nice woman, who had been very pleasant while I struggled to corral my errant little finger, looked up and asked me my social security number.

Blank. I went completely blank. I just stared at her.

Pause.

“You can’t remember it?” She asked.

“No,” I stammered. I was frantically clicking “Search” in my brain and coming up with “No Results.”

My mind whirled. This is it; I am toast. I’ve done all this annoying stuff and now I have failed. I won’t get my pass because I cannot remember the stupid SS number! A bloody “senior moment.” The time and effort wasted. My friends would get their clearance and I was going home embarrassed and empty handed.

“It’s not in my head,” I murmured. “It’s completely gone.”

She sort of smiled and leaned back into her chair behind her enormous desk.

Maybe this has happened before? I wondered, trying to make myself feel better. Maybe I am not the only idiot she has interviewed?

Suddenly a blessed lightening flash of memory: It’s on my Medicare card in my pocketbook. Yes!  But my pocketbook had remained in the waiting room with my friends.

“I have it! I have it!” I cheered, scraping back my chair. “I’ll be right back!”

My blood pressure returned to normal as I held my Medicare card carefully in my left hand and typed the numbers into the black box on the edge of the desk. Twice. (I typed them incorrectly the first time.)

 She hands me the paper; I was cleared.

I tell myself that this mix-up could have happened to anyone, but the truth is, it happened to an already nervous senior citizen who catapulted herself into a peak anxiety experience.

Sigh.

***

FYI: The TSA office is located at 446 Blake St. in New Haven.