I'm not supposed to tell ...

After I tell you this, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security might come after me. I’m generally pretty good at keeping secrets, but not this time …

You see, today, at the Vancouver Airport U.S. customs clearance, officers allowed me a couple of sips out of my own water bottle before they made me throw it out.

Yes, it’s a shocking breakdown of officer discipline, but don’t blame them. My subversive silver tongue undermined their best intentions and most stringent training to accept that – possibly – a blonde middle-class woman in her thirties might perhaps be carrying something other than powerful explosives in her water bottle. Or that she might be doing something other than carrying out some bold and evil plan that involved her actually ingesting such explosives … And that she might just be desperately thirsty and nearing dehydration! (I had a beer on the flight from Toronto to Vancouver in the hopes that it would help me relax … no such luck.)

Hey, I’m all for protecting people and society from the deranged and psychotic, but could we do this through policies that are not in and of themselves deranged and psychotic?