Consternation Over Aviation Urination

Now they’re asking for real trouble.

Take away the knitting needles and the scissors, fine. That I can live with.

You don’t run with scissors, you don’t fly with scissors either. Over at the TSA, the Transportation Safety Administration, the joke was that TSA stands for “taking scissors away.”

I was also all right with them spiriting away the metal knives and handing out plastic ones. I don’t know why they bothered with those metal knives in the first place -- I’ve had paper cuts more life-threatening than anything those knives could inflict.

But now the TSA is putting all of us in real peril.

It’s demanding that passengers on U.S.-bound flights not line up outside the planes’ bathrooms, waiting for a turn. Evidently they worry that among the innocent passengers in need could be terrorists hatching a plot in the pee queue.

You can get along without scissors on a transoceanic flight. You can get along without a dull metal knife. But you cannot get along without -- as the British say -- spending a penny. Or several.

This bodily function is so vital that when Charles Lindbergh met Britain’s King George V after his spectacular 33-hour transatlantic flight, the first thing the king wanted to know was, “How ever did you manage?” We know what he meant.

And what’s the point? So far as I know, the only threat from a lavatory patron occurred when a federal air marshal left his gun in the bathroom on a D.C.- to-Vegas flight. A passenger found it and, amazingly, did not shoot anyone.

But now, this regulation threatens to create more problems than it solves. I am referring, of course, to bladder rage.

And besides, how would such a no-queue rule be enforced?

Like first grade, we could raise our hands for permission from a flight attendant, who would escort us there and back -- and probably spit on her hanky and wipe the chocolate smudge off our faces and say, “Didn’t I tell you to go before you left home?”

Or we could be strapped in our seats by buckles that only release when a flight attendant unlocks them. Think of Charlton Heston in “Ben Hur,” chained in place, sweating and straining at his oar, and that noble Roman, Jack Hawkins, telling him, “Your eyes are full of hate, Forty-One. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.... So row well and live.”

The airlines could rent out catheters like stereo headphones, four dollars a pop. Flight attendants will be coming through the cabin and as always, correct change is appreciated. For those who don’t rent the catheter: Just use your seat cushion. It is, after all, a flotation device.

In fact, the TSA would just as soon nobody even stood up during the flight at all.

In fact, why do we need airplanes anyway? If you’re in such a hurry to get someplace, buddy, maybe you ought to get out of line, go stand over there and let us ask you a few questions. Yeah, you, pal -- the one with your legs crossed.