It's also a a little weird to be criticizing someone who supports a cause I believe is so important. (For example, I'm quite glad that someone as typically conservative as Orrin Hatch supports stem cell research.)

The essay disturbed me so much that I'd actually removed it from the site for a long time. It's the ugly little essay that gets shoved into the "miscellaneous" category, and I often forget that I ever wrote it.

Every once in a while something happens to remind me that it exists. For a while, it was coming up fourth on a Google search for "diabetes" and "airport security." One time as a result of doing such a search, a freshman English major at Michigan State University sent me an e-mail saying that I should consider writing because I was good at it.

The thought had never crossed my mind.

After the events of September, 2001, it moved down the list some and was coming up in the 100th position. It still gets some hits. Shortly thereafter, everyone in America was freaking out about the number of possible ways there were to hijack an airplane and some diabetics were starting to get nervous about carrying their insulin on board.

I received an e-mail from a person in Finland, asking me about the situation for travelling diabetics here in America. He also thought that Miss America was a jerk, and his English was a lot better than my Finnish.

Let me address the diabetics among us for a second:

Brothers and sisters, do not let them fuck with you. Carry your insulin on board. Do not ask permission. Do not apologize. Take it. Walk with the self-righteous air of the wrongly injured. Do not check your insulin. It sets a bad precedent for the rest of us, it might freeze, and you might be stuck at Hartsfield with nothing to eat but ice cubes.

I was surprised the first time that I flew after the terrorist attacks. I knew that they weren't letting anyone carry on blades, so I checked my jacknife, and put all my insulin in my carryon, just like normal. When I was flagged down, it wasn't for the syringes, it wasn't for my blood sugar monitor, or the "It Might Be Anthrax Hidden In the Insulin Bottle."

It was because I carry a pair of toenail scissors to cut the tape that holds my insulin pump in place. The blades on those badboys are 5/8" long. I was instructed to check them through in my luggage.

I can see why Europeans think that Americans are idiots. Not even John Claude Van Damme could take over a plane with a 5/8" scissor blade. If some terrorist could take over a plane using something so puny, I say we don't merely give them the plane, but we should immediately surrender the Capitol and White House as well, because they are from a clearly superior breed to the rest of us.

"Fly this plane to where I tell you, or I will viciously lacerate your arm to a depth of five-eighths of an inch. That's almost three-quarters of an inch, you American swine."

Perhaps in this era of supposedly heightened airline safety, the FAA is worried about people running with scissors in the aisles of 767's.