Security Blanket

"I was thinking today of the pine cone security didn't allow me to take into the Primus concert.

I wasn't meaning to throw it during the show, and all these years later I would agree with the decision security made that evening.
The thing that brought that pine cone to mind was the story of heightened security surrounding the convention this week. Even fruit was not allowed in the vicinity.
Bottles, no.
Back packs, no.
Guns, OK.

Funny stuff."

This was the email I received from my younger brother after the second day of the Republican National Convention. He was referring to a show we had attended back in our youth. It came at a time when we were both acclimating to our roles as responsible adults. On the way in, he was stopped and asked to relieve himself of the seed pod he was carrying. He does that. He's an artist. The things he picks up find their way into his art. The pine cone might have found its way into an installation if not for the confiscation of the woody fruit by the well-intentioned security detail who most certainly saw the projectile potential of such an object as being reasonably high.

It should be noted that this incident occurred in advance of the events of September 2001. All the danger that existed in that pine cone was in the imagination of the guy in the windbreaker who had jurisdiction of that doorway. As we were both more interested in seeing Primus than we were in causing a scene over a strobilus, we surrendered the pine cone. This concert was in Colorado. Before Columbine. Before Aurora. Before what we carried and how became a more visceral concern. 

Before.

Now we pass through metal detectors to go to concerts. My backpack is searched on the way into Disneyland. You weren't allowed to take a backpack into the Convention Zone in Cleveland. I don't know what the rules were about pine cones. Probably the same as those covering buckeyes. And fruitcakes. 

Funny stuff.