We are gathered here today to unite this TSA agent and this 3.5 ounce bottle of eye make-up remover in holy airport-security matrimony. Congratulations to the happy couple, and my condolences to the poor thirteen-year-old girl whose $6 make-up remover was just confiscated for no reason. She looks devastated, but hey, at least it wasn’t her Starbucks.

The truth is, back in the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, people were allowed onto their pterosaurs with bottles of any size – so long as they had their boarding passes. No longer. For one thing, laws demand that any bottles with a volume of more than 3.4 fluid ounces or 100 milliliters be confiscated at the airport security checkpoint. For another, pterosaurs are extinct. (But who really knows what new technology will bring? Perhaps the age of pterosaurs will come again! That would be the end of the TSA right then and there. Here’s hoping the government won’t create the Pterosaur Security Administration….)

These airport security laws are not just about the contents of your carry-on bags: airports randomly select people to go through special check lines in which they get full-body screens and pushed through bomb-sensing puffers. These measures are, of course, to prevent the sneaking of bombs or other explosives onto planes, and by extension to make sure all the planes – and their passengers – are safe. However, TSA’s methods are questionable. Rumor has it, the TSA is racially profiling people in their selection process – people they deem of “questionable ethnicity,” who they “think might look like” they would carry a bomb. However, according to a TSA statistics training course my friend’s second cousin took a few years ago, people are randomly selected based on skin color and whether or not they wear a turban. Which is good, because those turbans can hide anything! Seriously, anything! Is there a wallet in there? A gun? A lamp? Lord Voldemort’s spirit? (Personally, I’m glad we check every time. I’d hate for the return of the Dark Lord to occur on my plane to New York.) I understand it might be a little – oh, I don’t know – racist to select dark-skinned people into the special airport security lines. But those blessed enough to forego spending $100 at the tanning salon every summer need to get over it and deal with the fact that it’s really for the safety of everyone else.

Racial profiling aside, I miss the days when I could walk through the airport and right onto my plane without being patted down. The good ole days when I didn’t have to empty my entire carry-on bag and take off my shoes when I reached the security checkpoint. When I could arrive fifteen minutes before takeoff and still make my flight. But now? Now I’m lucky to make the flight even if I arrive an hour and a half before departure. While I agree that airports should be especially cautious about security measures to prevent occurrences like 9/11, I do think this is a bit overboard. A two hour flight is now taking up my entire day just because I have to show up three hours early to make sure my bag is checked in! That’s over a sixth of my entire day dedicated to the airport alone! (I heard somewhere that the number of hours the average person spends in an airport over their lifetime totals nearly 200 million.) Not to mention now I’m exhausted from my flight and the nearly endless security measures I had to go through, and I’ll spend the rest of the day sleeping. So really, TSA has taken away my entire day.

I propose we lighten security in airports. I’m not asking for everything to go – I’m sure the security measures currently in place are preventing a few terrorists from hijacking planes every once in a while; obviously TSA wouldn’t make this big a deal for absolutely nothing. I’m just proposing to downsize. Don’t put someone in the special security line unless you have probable cause – a link to terrorism or other violence, perhaps. Let me onto my plane without having to take my shoes off – it was a hassle to tie my shoelaces this morning at six when I woke up so I could be five hours early to the airport, and it’s even more of a hassle now that I’m untying them while I’m standing up awkwardly in line just to retie them after I pass the security checkpoint. And please, for the love of all things holy, have a heart, and let that poor girl have her eye make-up remover back. She’s tearing up over there because of that $6 you took from her, and now her mascara is running.