I Might Be On The FBI Watch List

I’d like to go ahead and clear up why I once delayed an international flight due to a misunderstanding about smuggling pistols. If you’re a regular reader do press on, but this post is primarily written for whichever federal investigator handles the yellow sticky notes in my file folder at the FBI headquarters.

In 2004 my friend Evan and I visited Britain during what the British refer to as “summer” for a study abroad program. (Before I go further, please note: if you are an FBI agent reading this, I am willing to offer testimony against Evan in exchange for leniency. Or, perhaps, for a novelty J. Edgar Hoover bobble head.) Over the course of our study, Evan and I backpacked all throughout the United Kingdom before it ever even occurred to us that we might need to bring knickknacks home to trick our families into thinking we’d missed them.

Thus in Scotland, our last stop, we made a point of wading through tacky tourist stores to see if we could purchase miniature bottles of scotch, or postcards of Mel Gibson stabbing English people. It so happens that in Loch Ness I chanced upon a beautiful pair of pearl-handled replica 19th century dueling pistols:

They were gorgeous, and tenuously associated with death, making them perfect souvenirs for my brother and so-called friend Andrew Young.

Flash forward to Gatwick Airport. As Evan and I stood in line to check our bags, helpful British airline officials paced by asking travelers about their pending luggage. “Are you transporting any explosives, agricultural products, bacterial samples, or weapons?”

I answer “No” without evening thinking about it. Because in my mind I had purchased two toys. Toy guns. Artful facsimiles, mind you, but unequivocally amusing trinkets.

After we checked our bags I decided to mail some postcards. On my way to a newsstand Gatwick’s impressively resonant speaker system announced my name throughout the concourse as if bellowed by God Almighty:

My first thought, of course, was that Evan had paged me over the intercom to fetch him some coffee. At some point in Northern Ireland he had lost his credit card (we still think it was goblins), and so for the last leg of our trip I had had been loaning him beer money. When I heard my name announced over the loud speakers, I angrily deduced that Evan wanted me to come all the way back to our departure terminal just so I could buy him a sandwich.

Thus I hopped onto one of those Jetsonesque horizontal escalators, stormed up to our gate departure desk, and blurted out, “I’m passenger Heaton!” In much the same tone you might say, “And what the hell do you want?!”

The airline official sized me up. Then asked:

This question utterly confounded me for roughly three seconds. “Smuggling dueling pistols” sounds like the kind of thing British people say, but only in movies about pirates. Then I recalled the contents of my checked bags.

Moments later, for lack of a better phrase, Gatwick Airport put me in “time out.” British airline officials made me sit by myself in a corner, as punishment, while flight attendants walked by to glare at me with that look of understated disdain so mastered by the English race. One attendant came over to let me know (in case I had not yet realized it) that I was a flaming moron and had scrambled an entire transatlantic flight grid through my sheer Yankee idiocy.

A few minutes later a British SWAT team baring machine guns and flak jackets showed up “to chat with me.” They politely escorted me down a hallway and out of the Gatwick Airport, then into a van with just them towards what I assumed was a terrorist detention center.

We drove out to the middle of a parking lot some distance from the planes, to rendezvous with yet another ominous van. Aside from more men with machine guns, this vehicle contained only one object: my suitcase.

“Mr. Heaton?” one of the soldiers asked, politely. “Would you please unzip your luggage? Very good, sir. Now would you be so kind as to remove the offending contents? By which I refer to the aforementioned dueling pistols.” (I’d like to point out that the British SWAT team guys were much nicer than the airline attendants. Armed people tend to be friendly, because they know no one is going to mess around with them.)

“Yyyyesssir,” I said, for I am a coward, and was shaking like a faulty drying machine. I reached into my bag and clasped each replica dueling pistol by the hilt, then lifted them up slowly, with the barrels facing downwards. I was very careful about this.

For a few moments myself and the Brits legally authorized to kill me assessed my pearl-handled mementos. Then said,

“Thank you,” I said, struggling to retain consciousness and bowel control. “They’re for my brother.” I started to slip them back into my luggage, but one of the guys with machine guns yelled “STOP!”

I froze instantly, feeling my internal organs cowardly hide beneath one another. Then he said, “We have bubble wrap. Cedric?”

One of the guys with AK-47’s pulled out a roll of bubble wrap and proceeded to safeguard my trinkets for their bumpy journey home.

Several hours later we flew into Dallas, where a burly American customs agent stamped my passport. “Anything to report?” he asked.

“In my checked luggage,” I said carefully, “there are two replica dueling pistols. Replicas,” I repeated.

He looked at me in such a way as to indicate that my passport should include an asterisk referring to clinically-slow brainpower. “Well can the guns shoot anybody?” he demanded.

“No sir.”

“Then nobody gives a shit. Welcome to Texas.”