Mari Ness - In which we learn that I am a Dangerous Criminal

I know that many of you have harboured the conviction that I am a dangerous, vicious criminal for years now, no matter how much I tried to put the blame on my cats. Consider yourselves fully justified, as my story will show.

So I head to the airport for what I assume will be a routine flight. Electronic ticket -- check. Cappucino break -- check. Security line -- check. Put two bags on the nice conveyor belt and step through -- check. Wait for bags to appear. Uncheck.

"Miss, we need to inspect this bag," said one of the security guys.

I blinked. I was carrying two bags, actually -- one my small wheeled duffel, and the other my shoulder bag. They wanted to inspect the small duffel.

Inspecting my shoulder bag would have made sense, since I put a lot of things in there, including scissors and other sharp metallic objects, and then promptly forget about them. As far as I could remember, though, the duffel bag had only clothes. They weren't really well packed, which would have upset my mother, but the way I looked at it, she wasn't looking at the bag now, and none of the security guards looked as if they were the motherly types who really cared about packing.

The bag was carefully carried over to one of the side tables and opened; the security guard began to rummage through it. I suddenly wondered if the cats had put something in the bag that was setting off the alarm, and promised myself that if they had, they wouldn't get any tuna fish when I came home. (The cats have been known to hide their toy mice inside my suitcase, which would be a touching gesture if the purpose wasn't to hide the mice from each other.)

They could have put in one of the metal Christmas tree ornaments, for example, or possibly a tiny pair of scissors -- unlikely, but these are strange cats --

The inspector pulled out a plastic K-mart bag. I blinked again. He opened the bag. Inside was a plastic toothbrush and a box of toothpaste. He tapped the toothpaste. "Ah. This is it."

"The TOOTHPASTE?" I said.

"Hang on," he said.

He gestured over a fellow inspector, who ambled over. We all looked at the small white box of toothpaste, which now, of course, seemed to be tinged with an Evil Aspect.

"Why is it in the box?" asked Inspector 2.

"Er, well, I was kinda rushing off to work this morning, and then I had to go to the airport straight from work, which is when I remembered that I had to buy toothpaste, so I ran into K-mart -- you can see that it's a K-mart bag because I just threw it in and --"

"You didn't have any at home?"

"I forgot to bring it, and I didn't want to drive home, and --" I suddenly cheered up. "Look! The receipt's still in the bag!"

So it was -- a receipt for one tube of Sensodyne toothpaste and one Colgate toothbrush. (I always work to achieve inconsistency in my brands.)

The inspectors looked at each other, and then at me. "Look, we know this sounds ridiculous, but we have to run it through the machine."

"My bag again?"

"The toothpaste."

"I really think it's just toothpaste," I said.

"We just have to make sure."

"You can keep it if you want," I said. "Really. I can buy more later."

They refused this generous offer, and did, in fact, take the toothpaste, the K-mart bag, and, for good measure, the toothbrush, and run them through the machine again, making me wonder just what the hell IS in Sensodyne toothpaste to cause all this fuss. Apparently not much, since after this, the toothpaste was handed back to me with full assurances that it was not, in fact, concealing any large metal objects.

"We're sorry about that," Inspector One said. "But sometimes, when it's at a weird angle..."

I began to plot the Great Toothpaste Hijacking, but realized that it would take too much effort.

In other news, we are now up to 300+ e-mails about the June 21st release of Harry Potter. Not one has suggested that we pelter J.K. Rowling with toothpaste to make her write faster. But the idea is now firmly implanted in my head.