June 16, 2005
Clippers
Flying at 30,000 feet with my seat belt obediently, but needlessly fastened, I was toying with a troublesome cuticle, clipperless. I tried to envision how a terrorist might use a pair of nail clippers to take over an airplane. It was not easy.
Just imagine a graduate of a mother-of-all-hardships obstacle courses in the remote deserts of one of those -stan countries walking across the stage at his commencement and being handed, instead of an AK-47, a pair of Revlon’s finest. Resplendent in their neatly polished iguana-skin scabbard, carefully engraved with both his name and date of graduation, as they were, his resentment yet left him with a complete lack of motivation. Of course, he had no choice but to accept them.
Even an eventual celestial reward of seventy-six virgins equipped with adequate supplies of lamp oil could hardly compensate for such an insult.