The Breath of Freedom is Blowing -- And it Don't Smell so Good.

Toothpaste is not the new lighter.  Neither is lens solution.  Or that tube of anusol you would rather they didn't hold up in front of all the other passengers while someone fondles your wife because she forgot to wear a sports bra without underwire to the airport.

Toothpaste is not the new pocketknife.  After all, most of the folks that carry them are just showing off when they rip them out at the slightest opportunity.  This'll show 'em.  We're not that collectively unhappy about inconveniencing smokers either.  They should quit.  Like we did.  Up hill.  In the snow.  Both ways.

Toothpaste is more like bottled water.  Tucked into your carry-on it's less than a buck a bottle, and it's the one thing that will keep you safe from 7% humidity and severe dehydration after an overseas flight.  Toothpaste is clean underwear and civilization.  Toothpaste is not negotiable.  So, are they going to specialize in selling it to us behind airport security in single serving sizes?  Can we pull a string of them off the tape to match the number of days and nights we'll be in a hotel until the next leg?  Will the hotels wake up to this marketing opportunity and team up with Tom's of Maine or Crest or Arm and Hammer?

Now, as herd animals we were cooperative on the day of.  We've been desensitized to insanity at the airport.  They tell us to take off our shoes, we take off our shoes.  The women wearing those silly high heeled witch toed pumps are secretly releaved to feel the cool tile at their feet.  They however, are all about their hair product.  They've gotten the purse/laptop/carry on bag thing down to a science so they don't have to spend a minute longer than necessary at the hell you call an airport.  They pack light and practical, but stylish.  Oh, how stylish.  All in that tiny rolling bag that some burly guy is always heaving into the overhead so he can get a quick glimpse to see if those are really hers or not.  No, sir.  She is not going to give up hair product more than once.

You say go ahead, check it. Don't fly much, huh?  Never had your bag follow you from town to town?  Never given a presentation in a set of dockers and a shirt bought at WalMart? Take a quick guess how many containers you have to put a can of mousse in before it won't explode all over the rest of your suitcase.  Do you know what happens to lipstick in 107 degree heat on the tarmac getting loaded in the plane?  I see, you didn't think about that. But it's kind of funny.  Payback for the sharp shiny pointy things you can't bring on.

And we all liked to joke about Granny's knitting needles.  

All this safety, this womblike, authoritarian, ritualized absence of all good sense costs us something on the order of $5.5 billion dollars a year.  We line up to be manhandled and humiliated as though it was an incantation to keep the plane in the sky. But the question is, will we give up our toothpaste without a fight?  Or does the absence of toothpaste keep the breath of freedom fresh?

Will morning breath become the new black?

What are you willing to endure to be free?  Or safe?  What are you willing to endure to pay the mortgage?  What are you willing to endure to get to Six Flags?  Or your cousin's wedding or your parent's funeral?

Are you willing to give up toothpaste?