Happy Thursday, kids! The weeks fly by, don’t they?

Speaking of flying, in all my years of airline travel, I’ve never had something taken from me after going through security. This is true even after 9/11 and the creation of the TSA, who’s members basically strip search every passenger with their Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines.

That all changed today on my trip from upstate New York to Chicago. In the Rochester International Airport (ROC), where there were literally two people present at all of the check-in desks—me and another passenger—I took my turn going through security.

I had to take my shoes off, take my laptop out of my backpack, and lay all of my loose items, including my wallet and my cell phone, in a grey plastic bin. Then I pushed my shoes, backpack and bin into the x-ray machine, took my turn being photographed by the millimeter wave scanners, and rejoined my items on the other side.

But wait! My wallet was flagged, and I had to join an overweight TSA screener with a bad haircut and a loosely-fitting Peking Lung Pox mask at his steel desk at the end of the conveyor belt.

There he picked up my minimalist leather wallet from the grey bin and asked me if it was mine. “Yes,” I said. In it were identification cards, credit cards, and my buy-ten-get-one-free stamp card for Sopraffina’s coffee. But he wasn’t interested in those; he was interested in my multi-use pocket tool, which is made out of metal and sat in a plastic slipcase in one of the wallet’s leather slots. It looks like the one below.

I have traveled with that metal tool on several trips out of Chicago, Florida and Texas. It was flagged by TSA in two of those cities, but each time, after taking a look at it, they let me go with it. Not today.

Today, Mr. TSA pulled it out, held it up and said, “This can’t go. It has a serrated edge and a knife edge on it.” I complained that I had already flown with it several times and had never had a problem. His reply was, “You can return it to your car, or you can have us send it to your home for $20.”

I told him that was BS. He asked me if I wanted to talk to his supervisor and I said yes.

When the supervisor came over, he didn’t ask me what the problem was or try to hear me out. He gave me, almost literally word-for-word, the same speech. I gave him the same answers, but to no avail. I told him I hoped he enjoyed it, and walked away. Not my proudest moment, but as I thought about it, there are several reasons I was irritated—and not all of them are obvious.

1. The pocket tool was a gift from someone I respected. No one wants to give up something that has personal meaning attached to it.

2. I was annoyed that when the first TSA screener asked if I wanted to talk to his supervisor, he implied that I could plead my case to him. It also implied that there was a chance that I could get his original decision overruled. So I expected that the guy would come over and talk with me about it. But this supervisor didn’t. He came over, showed me my pocket tool and said, “This can’t go. It has a serrated edge and …”

It was clear that I wasn’t going anywhere with him. So why was he there? He was wasting his time and my time.

3. Based on their decision, they were implying that I am a threat. They say that it’s for everybody’s safety, but think about it. The tool, which sits in its case and which I have on my person all the time, is inert. It has no volition of its own. It has to be wielded, by a person, to be used as a weapon. That person is me.

That turns “innocent until proven guilty” on its head. The TSA presumes malicious intent and there is no chance to plead or prove your innocence. I can’t reason with the guy like I tried to, saying, “What do you think I’m going to do with it?”

I mean, look at it. It’s 3 inches long. It has no handle. It’s probably 1/16th of an inch thick. In order to use the serrated or knife edge, I’d have to grab it along the opposite edge with my finger tips. There’s no way to produce enough leverage to be lethal. The worst I could probably do is produce a gash on someone, and I’d risk cutting myself in the process. He didn’t care.

4. The one reason that is obvious was that my pocket tool was taken from me. The TSA took my property. According to the screeners, their guidelines prohibited my multi-purpose tool from being taken on the plane.

The TSA website says, “The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.” That means that the supervisor is responsible for the decision. He decided to confiscate my property. Because I didn’t have a car to put it in, nor was I checking a bag, my option was to pay them $20 to ship it back to myself.

But wait. Since it’s your decision to confiscate my property, why don’t you ship it back to me on your dime? Since the TSA has some discretion to allow items that may not fall cleanly into either the “allowed” or “not allowed” categories, why should I pay for their decision—especially when other screeners at other airports have let it go?

This is probably the core of why I was irritated. The government, which exists to protect my rights, trampled them today. They took my private property and then told me I could buy it back for $20. It’s not so much the loss of the tool that irks me as it is the violation of my freedom.

We are living in a world shaped by 19 Muslims who boarded planes with box-cutters and perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in history. That was followed by another Muslim fanatic who tried to blow up a plane by detonating his shoes, which were filled with explosives. Nineteen years later, I’m having to kick off my shoes, have my belongings x-rayed, get virtually stripped searched, and give up my credit card-sized multi-purpose tool before boarding a plane.

Safe travels, everyone.