The Clown And The Airport Minions
By Calvin Duke Leer en Español
Toncontin, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, February 20th 1:00PM, I arrive to immigration to take a flight headed for Costa Rica.
Minion 1: “Good afternoon, passport and boarding pass please” Me, showing them: “Good afternoon, here they are”. Minion 1: “place your four fingers on the scanner please…OK, that´s alright. Why are you travelling to Costa Rica?”
Me, after thinking it over for a moment: “Excuse me, ¿why are you asking?” Minion 1: “Because it´s my job”. Me: “I don´t understand, I´m a foreigner that´s travelling to another foreign country. If I was entering Honduras, I´d understand, but if I leave, why should the State of Honduras care what I´m going to do abroad.” After looking at me in a surprised manner for a few seconds he says: “NATIONAL SECURITY”.
Damn, national security, 9/11, NSA, drones and ISIS come to mind…but I look around, reality comes back in an instant and I start getting irritated: “I´m going to Costa Rica because I just feel like it”.
Minion 1 looks at me for a few seconds in a somewhat between mad and surprised manner, suddenly he runs to look for the supervisor just a few meters away. Minion 2 listens to him and turns towards me, her face starts to transform and leaning forward says to me: “It´s you, always you, the rude man who treats us with no respect”. I start wondering what she is talking about, suddenly I remember an episode from a few months back, when I answered that I was travelling to Costa Rica and from there to Las Vegas because there you could find way better prostitutes. On that occasion, the minion on shift had let me go through, maybe he agreed with the statement.
Me: “I treat no one with disrespect, the officer here asked me why I was travelling to Costa Rica and I answered politely that it was because I felt like it. By the way, the alleged officer has not shown me his badge or uniform, I don´t even know if he is really an officer, I want to see his badge”.
Minion 1: “And what do you care if I have a badge or not? I don´t have to give any explanations to you, I´m the authority here”.
Me: “And how do I know if you are the authority if you do not show me your badge?” Minion 1: “We don´t have to show our badge, learn some respect”. Minion 2: “It´s a matter of national security!” Again, I ponder on how these guys think they are a platoon of James Bonds. “However, I´ll show it to you anyways, look here”, and he wiggles it 3 to 4 times in my face without me being able to, I won´t say catch his name, even see his picture.
Meanwhile, a uniformed military man, whose rank I do not recognize, but with the name Ramírez tattooed on his shirt, comes near. Minion 3: “What´s going on in here?” Me: “Ask these two, they won´t let me go through. By the way, may I see your badge?”
Minion 3 does not answer, grab his cellphone, dials a number and starts to stare at me right to the eyes. I know not what to do, so I start staring at him as well. We look like two dumb kids looking at each other with a grudge; the first one to blink loses. After a while he wins, I grab my phone and call my lawyer. “Carlos, I´m here at the airport with a group of alleged officers, no one is showing me their badge, they say they are not letting me through because I disrespected them.” And Carlos: “What did you do this time?” Me: “I told them I was going to Costa Rica because I felt like it”. Carlos, after a brief moment which he probably used to curse me: “Let me speak with the most reasonable one.” Me: “It appears to me that is Mr. Ramírez, here you go.” The Sargent, Lieutenant or private that was keeps on staring at me without flinching, not moving a muscle.” Me: “Carlos, I think he doesn´t want to speak with you.” Carlos: “I´ll be there in ten minutes, don´t do anything stupid.”
Suddenly Minion 2 starts to shout: “Now I will speak with your boss, so you´ll learn your lesson once and for all”. Everyone in a 20 meter radius turns to look at Minion 2, deep silence at the immigration zone. Me, after a while: “I don´t have a boss, who are you going to call?” And her: “Everyone has a boss, where do you work?” Me: “I work at (name of my company), but I am the owner there, I don´t have a boss.” Minion 2: “Then I will speak with you ambassador, what is his name?” I feel astonished about the idea that the ambassador could be my boss and I answer: “I don´t know.” Which is true, I´ve never thought about losing time with another statist parasite just because he was born in the same place I was. And Minion 2, always shouting: “Now you will see, I tell you” and she disappears towards the boarding zone.
Suddenly another man comes to the scene, all dressed in black and with the attitude of “I´m the one in charge here you bunch of turds”. Big Boss steps in Minion 1´s original chair and asks: “Where are you going?” Me: “To Costa Rica, here are my travel documents. By the way, could you show me your badge?” “My badge I won´t show but my name is Marvin Ochoa.” And, talking to Minion 1: “Hey, you, checked him already?” Minion 1: “No, he disrespected me and everyone here; he is very rude and always gives us trouble. Today he told me that he was going to Costa Rica because he felt like it.” Big Boss to me: “Is that true?” Me: “About why I am going to Costa Rica, yes”. He starts to type into his keyboard and says: “Here we have to write down the reason you are travelling, for tourism, for work or other…I´ll put in tourism.” Me: “Put in tourism. As a matter of fact, I had my suspicions it was that, why didn´t anyone tell me before?” Big Boss does not answer: “Learn some respect and get on your way.”
I grab my bags and move towards the boarding zone. There I find Minion 2 who is going back to the scene and yells to me as she goes by: “We all have a boss, and it is the Lord who is in heaven.” Me: “I´m an atheist.” And Minion 2 answers “Now I understand, you are a (and some adjectives I could not make because she was moving away, but surely nothing nice).
Finally I get to the plane and call Carlos to tell him to turn back to his office. He asks me, in a serious tone: “Had you been in the US, would you have behaved in the same manner?” I kept silent for few seconds. No, of course I would not have behaved in the same way, I know that if I had done so anything could have happened to me, from a body 
inspection with a finger up my ass to ending up in Guantanamo. I feel guilty. But, after thinking about it for a while, I ask Carlos “Carlos, you think they would have behaved in this manner in the US? I think they would have explained to me why they were doing it, according to which law, Sir here, Sir there , and only if I kept on behaving like a clown would they have become any dangerous.” Carlos: “But you are the anarchist, don´t abusive and unjust laws bother you?”
Me, after thinking about it: “Yes, obviously yes, but I always prefer a place where there is rule of law, even if it´s an abusive law, as all non-voluntary laws are, to a place where there is arbitrary use of power by the strongest one, who is so only because he has the rifles of the State behind him. It matters only in degree if the strongest guy is Hitler or just an airport minion, in principle it is the same thing.
I keep thinking it over in the plane. Comes to mind what my mother would say: “There you are by yourself, being an exhibitionist. Those poor men were only doing their job, and there you go and play clown”. Damn, how ugly feelings of guilt are …”You did it only because they were poor and ignorant”, goes on my mom, “if it would´ve been at least a little bit dangerous you would have submitted”.
That´s when I understood. It is true, I´m a coward, I would´ve never had the balls of a Sakharov or a Mandela, maybe Snowden´s, still not so sure though. However, I just can´t avoid it, it´s in my DNA, I viscerally hate the State´s abuses, big or small harassments, whether they come from a president that wishes to reelect himself by any means or from an airport minion that wants to impress a pretty colleague by playing tough. I despise them; it hurts me physically every time I have to deal with them.
So forth we go, minions, bring it on; this clown is ready for another round.
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Written by Redaccion
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