Traveling is thrilling, I love breaking out of my day-to-day routine to have an adventure. Every year since I was super little my dad would take me along on one of his musical tours. My dad plays in a band called the Banana Slug String Band and goes on tour around the country teaching kids about science and conservation through music. I frequently went with him to Hawaii, but one year I decided that I wanted to go to New York City. I wanted to see Time’s Square, go to Central Park to walk through Strawberry Fields, and I really wanted to see a show on Broadway! We set the date in February, 2009.

We arrived at the airport early covered in layers of clothes. It was freezing outside and we knew that the plane would be cold. My dad had on one of his weird and funky hats and was wearing his puff-balls-for-peace necklace that he has worn since the day I made it for him way back when I was six. It’s his trademark. The airport was busy but not crowded. My dad, “Doug Dirt” and fellow band mate, “Marshy Mark” and I were in line at the security checkpoint with all our bags and instruments. That’s where the problem started. My dad had forgotten about an Odwalla juice he had in his backpack, so he walked outside the security zone to drink it, leaving me with all the bags. The lady behind the X-ray screen asked, “Whose bag is this?” I looked at it, the small, black rolley bag that belonged to my dad.

“Mine,” I say so my dad could drink his Odwalla.

“Grace, you will be fine” my dad said. “This happens all the time, they always think that our microphones, guitar stands and cords are something weird. I’ll be right back.”

“Can you please step over here, we need to examine your bag.”

“ Okay,” I said confidently as my dad walked out of sight.

“Now place your feet on this carpet while I pat you down.” I trembled, my dad had not said anything about getting patted down. I hated authority figures. I hated the feeling of being at fault or in trouble for something. I was the girl who would avoid trouble at all costs and now I was smack dab in the middle of it. My knees felt like they were going to give in and my palms were starting to sweat.


“Okay,” I finally said, nervously. She patted down every last inch of my body.

“Okay, thank you. Now you can sit right over here in this chair while we search your bag.”

“Okay,” I said and began to look at all the other people going through security so smoothly. I was jealous. I wanted so badly to be sitting at our gate waiting to board while doing homework. Yes, at that moment, I would have rather been doing homework.

More and more security guards surrounded me with blue latex gloves on; I was so scared. I did not understand what was happening. A fat security guard with grandma glasses on came over to me and held a bag with some white powder in it.

“What is in the bag?” she asked in a terrifying way. As she stood there towering over me, my stomach dropped. What was in the bag? What did my dad bring on this plane and why did he leave me alone with it?

Finally I managed to say, “I don’t know it’s my dad’s bag with his stuff in it. He had to go out of security to drink an Odwalla juice.”

I began to get really scared. I had no clue what my dad had in the bag and if there was something that wasn’t allowed. What would they do to me? All I wanted was my mom to appear and hold me in that hug, you know the ones moms give when all you can do is cry, when you can’t even peep out a word. I wanted that hug so badly. Finally, Marshy Mark came over and asked the security guard what was going on and what they were looking for.

“Our machine is reading TNT and it has read it twice now.”

I asked, confused, “What’s TNT?”

The lady gave me a look like yeah right, you have a bag with traces of TNT and you are claiming that it’s your dad’s bag. “It’s explosives.” I got a lump in my throat and my eyes started to drip. I was terrified! I was going to go to jail or worse. My dad saw me from outside of security and motioned to me asking if I was okay. I was NOT okay! I wanted to go home at this point, I didn’t even want to go to NYC. Another security guard came over to me and asked me to get my dad’s ID. Are you kidding me? He forgot his ID when he went outside of security? This just added to my stress. What if I couldn’t find his ID? How would we get on the plane? I scrambled through his backpack frantically looking for his ID. I really just wanted my dad to come back over to me. He was so good at solving problems and this was feeling like a HUGE problem. Finally I found his ID.

A minute later the big, mean security lady with the grandma glasses came back over to me and told me that my bag had cleared and that I could go. As I started packing up the bag my dad got to me and asked what happened. Tears flowing down my cheeks all I could say was, “Your stupid black rolley bag showed up as TNT. I don’t even know what TNT is! I will never carry your bag onto an airplane again!”