Twenty-five-ish years ago, my father and I went on a fishing trip in the Florida Keys with a very dear friend of the family, who had been going their for years. I’ve written about him before, because he had a severe case of polio shortly before Salk’s vaccine was developed, and needed a good deal of medical equipment to survive.
As you might imagine, flying with Martin required a lot of red tape, even in those idyllic pre-9/11 days– he needed assistance in boarding, oxygen available on the plane, some medical supplies in the carry-on, and all of this stuff needed to be cleared with the airline.
Martin had been through all this many times before, but when we got to the airport, we had to go through a ridiculous little three-way dance routine at the check-in counter. The woman at the counter refused to address Martin directly, so everything had to be routed through my father, who had no idea what was needed. It was as if he was serving as some kind of interpreter from English to Handicapped and back again.
“Will he need oxygen on the flight?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Martin, will you need oxygen on the flight?”
“He won’t necessarily need it, but the bottle needs to be available. It can be stowed under his seat,” came the reply.
“He won’t necessarily need it, but the bottle needs to be under the seat.”
“OK, will he need…?”
It was so offensively stupid it actually became sort of funny.
Nothing has changed in the last quarter-century. If anything, that story suggests that it may have gotten worse, at least for some people. Even by the standards of airport security, that’s shameful.