I don't know what other suburban Southern California moms – hereafter referred to as the much more hip-sounding SoCal moms – are thinking about when they're in line to have their bags searched before they can enter the land of Disney. I know that I'm usually trying to keep my three sons from hitting, biting, or screaming, until we can officially become temporary royal subjects of this happy land. But the other day was a bit different. I'll let you in on a secret that those of us annual SoCal passholders know about Disneyland: Don't go when school is out! The crowds are horrendous. As a result, I hadn't gone since the first of June, before the London bombings, before renewal of the Patriot Act.
We were in line in the late August heat to go to a two-year-old's birthday party. I'll give this to the land of the mouse: Even when it's crowded, they're great about getting people to the warrantless baggage search quickly. And they are nice as they look inside your bags.
I don't know why we moms so quickly and easily acquiesce to this search. Disney has every right to do it, of course. Disney is a private company and the land is private property, whatever that means these days. We ticketholders have every right to refuse. But I've yet to see someone turn and walk away from a Disneyland search. Perhaps it's because we have one or two or three children to keep us distracted. Or maybe it's because most SoCal moms have to submit to much more humiliation when we visit our children's grandparents: No one was actually born and raised in Los Angeles. We all have to herd our children through metal detectors, taking off shoes and folding strollers and taking off baby slings, all to show that, pregnant or nursing, we are not terrorists but merely moms trying to get some children to Grandpa's house.
Our family had, in fact, just returned from my mother-in-law's funeral. She had died unexpectedly and my husband, trying to coordinate flights for us all, had gotten himself a one-way ticket to Miami. Of course, having his mother die earlier that day and trying to rush to help and comfort his father branded him as more likely to be a terrorist. The loving father of my children was taken aside, wanded, and asked to do some strange thing with the top of his pants. Nice treatment, really, for a bereaved son.
The rest of us got off more lightly; we went a couple of days later and had a round-trip ticket, branding us only slightly guilty. Still, we worried. When you're in the "social security" line, as my four-year-old calls it, with a four-year-old who likes to be funny, his two younger brothers, a tired mom who is a stand-up comic, and a sign that says "No Jokes," well, let's just say that we feel lucky when we're not singled out to be groped by a wand or by a stranger's hand. A mom alone with three children under five feels fortunate when she is able to go to the gate unscathed in the same strange way that we treat those piddly plane pretzels we receive after boarding as if they were a small slice of filet mignon. The land of the mouse seems benign and peaceful in comparison, even with its employees' search, for whatever.
Having traveled back across the country the day before the birthday party, I was grateful for the quick search into my belongings, for the ability to remain fully shod. I unzipped my purse and hoped the guy peering into it wouldn't think it was too messy. My purse must have passed muster because then he asked me to unzip my diaper bag; he hardly peeked inside. And it was all over: We were approved to spend money at Disneyland! What would have happened if I'd said no? No one with three impatient children wants to find out. We are easy targets indeed.
A curious note though – the "cast member," as the mouse kingdom euphemistically calls its employees, seemed satisfied when he saw a diaper at the top of my diaper bag, not digging more deeply. While I am grateful for the half-trust of his cursory search, part of me wonders if he thought I would make a dumb terrorist, one who would not think to place any destructive device under a diaper. Did he think I wasn't smart enough to place a diaper over whatever contraband he was looking for?
And what was it he was looking for anyway? I've gone to Legoland, a couple of hours south of Anaheim, and am treated as though I am not at all a criminal. No one snoops through anything at Legoland and I’ve yet to hear of one terrorist act there.
If I want to search the pocketbook of everyone who comes into my private home, I certainly can, but how many friends would I have then? And would I want to be a friend to someone who searched my bag before I entered his or her home?
We Americans are a trustworthy bunch, though. If Disneyland's doing it, it must be for our own good. Besides, we've got so much other stuff to think about. It was easy to let myself go through the cursory glance into my belongings. What's a little freedom traded for a birthday party? Besides, we were so tired after lugging everyone to the tram, off the tram, to the baggage check line, and then through the actual entry gate, that we had no time to think about Disney's motives after our arrival. Like a Beta-Minus from Brave New World, we assumed it was for our own good and found it easier to acquiesce than to question or refuse or turn around. After all, we had a Buzz Lightyear ride to catch.
After the parade was over that evening and I had desperately searched for our car, having completely forgotten which Disney character level I parked on, I drove home with three sleeping children in the backseat. It's times like these, when the cell phone is off, that give a suburban mom time to ponder such things as constitutional rights and freedom.
And ponder I did, as I thought about the ease with which I had acquiesced to the opening of my purse and diaper bag. What if I hadn't allowed the unzipping? Would we have been denied entry to the land of the mouse? Would any mom risk driving children to Anaheim and having her children not go to Disneyland?
It can't be too terribly different for the New York subway commuters, many of whom seem more than happy to be unzipped, groped, or otherwise searched, all at the mayor's whim. They're in a hurry; they have to go to work; they have to go home. Sure, you can say no, but why would you – especially when doing so might mess up your evening? And I couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, when my children watch their mom unzipping her purse for a stranger for some vague reason that is unknown to my children and to me, that my children become desensitized to the whole search thing.
I also remembered what another cast member had said during my unzipping; I heard her tell another potential royal subject that the area past the royal checkpoint is called the "safe zone." Those are her exact Orwellian words. If we sacrifice willingly a bit of freedom, then we gain safety. And a birthday party. Perhaps that's the lesson of the Brave New America, the post-9/11 society in which we live. We said it was okay to sacrifice freedom when our elected congressmen approved the Patriot Act. And then again, we said for them to take away a few more freedoms when they renewed the Patriot Act, right after the London bombings. After all, we gain safety, right?
In our new search-filled country, the "unreasonable searches and seizures" that our Constitution says we are "secure" against, seem much more reasonable. Indeed, we all become so desensitized to the search process itself that we willingly acquiesce, whether the search is constitutional or not. We have nothing to hide, after all, so why not allow that warrantless policeman, or social worker, or whatever, into our home? After all, a search is merely a prelude to the Happiest Place on Earth!
September 19, 2005
