What do you mean I’m a threat to national security?

I should start off with a bit of context for those who don’t know me.

I am not a threatening-looking guy.

(Those who know me can stop laughing any time now.)

I’m tall-ish without being really tall, and pretty thin. I have a narrow oval face and ears that stick out a bit. My eyebrows naturally flick up into slight devil’s peaks, but that’s the only thing about me that’s even remotely villainous, and even then I could at best manage a sort of young, close shaven Vincent Price, as opposed to say anything as menacing as a psychotic Edward Norton.

I do not resemble a celebrity, any celebrity at all. I’m not even square-jawed or homespun-bumbling enough to pass as a pre-war Jimmy Stewart. (Although there is a photo of me when I wore more hair a lot thicker which some think has a resemblance to Peter Carey. I can only wish.)

Anyway, my point being - I am not used to being hassled by security, bouncers or police. I am just self-evidently not a threat to anyone. Particularly when I’m in a pin-stripe, double-breasted work suit. Not even my vaguely cool grey suit; just my first-ever business suit, respectable but hardly gangster-sharp.

So, I was catching the plane home from Adelaide last night. Adelaide is apparently an international airport, but you still walk across the tarmac and up steps to get aboard a domestic flight, like something from a 1940s film, which might explain my Vincent Price/Jimmy Stewart ramblings. It is not a place where you expect security to be tight as those snug jeans you threw in the drier once too often.

Having made seven or eight round-trip domestic flights this year for work, and being accustomed to moving in and out of court buildings - I am entirely used to metal detectors. I’ve never had a problem with them.

I usually have all my metallic items into my hand luggage by the time I hit the x-ray machine so I don’t have to go through the whole frisking-yourself for spare change and keys routine: you know there’s always the one, hapless men in a suit clogging up the line while he empties his pockets and then slows things down again on the other side re-pocketing all his trinkets. Much better to drop the bag off glide through, pick it up on the other side and keep going.

My hand luggage was actually too stuffed with work documents last night to do that, so I used one of those little scuffed white-plastic trays. I stepped through the metal detector and it beeped at me.

Bugger, I thought, what have I forgotten?

“Sir,” says the security guy with the wand and the standard-issue facial expression, “do you have a watch?”

“Yep,” I said removing it, “and some sunglasses. They haven’t set it off before.”

He rattled another little plastic tray at my like a collection plate, I deposited my items and he ushered me through a second metal detector (the back-up unit?).

Alarms again.

“Let’s have a look at your belt buckle, sir.”

Now, did I mention I was travelling with my boss, a man who’s been a senior lawyer since at least the time of my birth? He’s an extremely patient man.

As I was removing my belt he was standing two meters away with both our bags, waiting for me at the end of the x-ray belt. This didn’t make me at all self-conscious. Not at all. Nope.

I glanced at my boss and decided to get this whole farce over with by removing all metal on me for a final run through the metal detectors. So I removed my cufflinks as well in the hope this would spare me a meeting with Rover the sniffer dog and a big man with gloves called Guido. My person was now metal-free.

I walk through the metal detector again - again the alarm goes off.

At this point I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t believe there was any metal left on me except one filling and the zipper in my pants.

I certainly wasn’t expecting the next request.

“Sir, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to remove your shoes.”

“What?”

“Your shoes. There’ll be a metal support bar in the sole.”

“You think my shoes have metal in them?”

“Seen it dozens of times. There’ll be a metal bar running across the sole. It’ll show up in green when we put it through the x-ray. Could you just sit down over there and take your shoes off?”

I sat on a US-penal-system-orange chair and took off my nice lace-up boots and put them in the plastic tray with my belt, cufflinks, sunglasses and watch.

I was walked back through the metal detector in my little socked feet (finally, no beeping) and then I dutifully padded up to the x-ray (one hand at my belt-less waistband) to confirm that yes, indeed, there was a little green stripe in the silhouette of my shoes.

Yup, right there. A green stripe.

I was returned to my boss like someone straight out of the drunk-tank at a local lockup: sock feet, shoes in one hand, my belt, watch, cufflinks and other possessions in a little plastic tray in the other.

I looked at my boss, grinned and said: “Bet you never thought you’d have a shoe-bomber working for you.”