Airport security vs. us.

The kids have been great travelers this summer. Lots of fun trips. A few ups and downs with flights (pun intended) but overall we have done well. Our last flight of the summer was a flight out of Denver headed to Memphis. We arrived at the airport with lots of time to spare. The Denver Airport is really designed in a most perplexing way. Enter from passenger drop off, go down escalator to giant room that looks like it was supposed to be a mall.shopping.food area, weave through security lines, then take elevator back up to the level you were already on (separated by those velvet ropes - high security methods I am sure) and then back down another escalator to the tram. Ride tram, get off tram, and then, you guessed it, back up another escalator.
If that wasn't absurd enough, here is my list of Denver airport craziness:

1. Three people are working the new "pay some money and skip everyone in security line" (What the heck?) I don't understand this really. I am guessing I submit to extra background checks and then give them money and I skip security with the common folk?? So three people working this elite line. For how many people??? That would be ZERO. No one. There were hundreds of us in the common folk line. One guy was yawning and playing on his cell phone. Wow.

2. Once you go past the man who sits on a bar stool and looks at your boarding pass with the little light thing, there are two security lines branching off behind him. There are about 6 of these men on stools. So how many lines should there be? 12. how many does Denver have? Oh - about three lines funneling into one security checkpoint. The lines are funneling wrong. But people,once past the man on the bar stool, chose a line and then they were committed. No matter that three lines are funneling into one checkpoint here while 1 line goes to 1 checkpoint there. People start getting annoyed. People start bonding with their neighbor over the ridiculousness. That no one that works there is helping funnel lines for quicker service.We start losing lines and morphing into a crowd which scares the bejesus out of me when flying with the little people/  And that brings me to ridiculous point #3.

3. Security Man Leroy (he real name - no fake names on this post) is standing between checkpoint lines 4 and 5 giving the same speech over and over. And I quote, "It is hot in this airport and the lines are long. And I get off at 3 no matter what is going on, so no need to get upset."
Um - WHAT? Replay that in your mind for a second. Was this a pep talk? Was this a test by some Candid Camera tv show to see which passenger would punch him out first? He should have been glad that afternoon when he drove home at 3 that no one from that line was writing down his tag number and I am pretty sure I heard more than one specific threat to his tires.

All of that brings me to this: we finally make it to the conveyor belt. My children know the drill. They know to take shoes off, to place bags in bins, to stand there until directed. They do this very well. We make it through the xray machines and its time to put shoes back on.  For a moment, I am tempted to tell Stephen to hurry. To tell him to put his shoes on quickly, that people are waiting behind us. But you know what? I don't say it. I stop myself before the words come out. Stephen is four years old. He has stood in the security line without complaint or tantrum. He followed rules and procedures that even some adults have following. He did a good job. So if it takes him a minute to put his shoes on by himself? If someone behind us has to wait 2 minutes for him to get himself and his backpack and stuffed lion situated, Then so be it. I am not hurrying him.
He plopped himself down to the side of the "put your shoes back on area" and promptly began the task. I stood like a wall on the other side of him daring any grumpy adult (security personnel or not) to tell me to move him.

I don't want to be the ones telling my kids to hurry all the time. "Hurry, we are late, hurry" It rings in my ears when I do have to say it. I made up a fun march a few years ago about shoes on and getting out the door. We all sing it together and we make it out the door on time (mostly). And the times we don't, well, it seems that nothing catastrophic came from our periodic tardiness.
I will save that word "hurry" for rare occasions. It's a little thing I can do to respect the awesome job my kids are doing of growing up.