Piercings and airport security

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Once, at the airport, I witnessed a young punk-styled fellow have some trouble repeatedly setting off the metal detectors. He sported a lot of visible piercings and jewellery everywhere, as well as clothes adorned with studs, chains, spikes, etc. He was cool about it and cooperative with removing things from his pockets, etc., but I watched for a few minutes and he was still beeping. I did not see the resolution as I had to catch my own flight.

Has anyone had this problem? May we presume he eventually made it through?

#2

Ok, so you wake up. You are getting dressed because you’ve got hurry and catch your flight to god-knows-where. You start applying ( inserting) all your piercers. And add your chains, spikes, what-not. Hurry, don’t wanna be late. Get there in time to hold up a security line for 30-45 min. WTF? Did said person forget about the metal detectors? Or they just don’t care. Hmmm? Interesting.
Same kinda thing (maybe): highschool basketball playoff. Big crowd expected. PTB decide to wand/detect every purse and person. I cannot tell you how many knives, brass knuckles and other implements of crime they find. And a few guns. Are these people stupid or something? “Oh, officer I forgot I was C.C. my loaded 45.” Duh!

#3

As someone who has dated several of these dudes, it’s more like:

Roll out of bed. Take a few minutes to compose yourself. Take a few hits from the bowl. Find your left shoe, because the right one is still on. Call a cab/uber/hop in the car/wake your girlfriend up to drive you.

Done.

#4

BTW, how does one insert a “piercer,” out of curiosity? :smiley:

#5

You know put the pointy part in the hole in your body part and put on the back part.
ETA can’t call them earrings if you have a piercing on another body part. Just saying.

#6

People with body piercings don’t take them out, and especially don’t take them out on a daily basis. There is no pointy part, either.

Get off my lawn, old man.

#7

They’re still not called piercers.

Piercers are the people who put the hole in you that you put the piercing through.

#8

Oh, I see. Go figure. Does it really matter? I am a female not an old man.

#9

Yes, it matters; please, using language in accordance with already-accepted usage helps keep it from sliding. It helps those of us who care about precision keep up some semblance of it.

#10

Ok, ok. The pointy thing is a pointy thing. How else should it be described? A dull thing? No, don’t think that covers it. Shaft? nah, sounds lewd. It’s a piece of metal, stiffer than wire. It’s pointy, it goes in a hole. Big deal. Move on folks.

#11

There is no word for the end you insert into the hole.

In almost all piercings, it’s the same width all the way around. They’re called “captive bead rings.” example pic: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zgr9D8cSL.UX500.jpg

Unless they’re the straight ones, which look like this: https://image.dhgate.com/0x0s/f2-albu-g5-M00-BA-E1-rBVaJFhQq2OAC92YAAIV_5ompyQ279.jpg/gauge-14g-stainless-steel-internally-threaded.jpg

Also,

Sorry, thought we were fighting ignorance here.

#12

It’s called a stem. [ETA: well, some earrings have stems. Others might not.]

#13

I’ve learned. I’ve learned. Thanks to you all.

#14

My mom has the opposite problem – she has no piercings, the only piece of jewelry she might be wearing is a necklace, and she always sets off the machine at security. They seem to be looking for a specific object when they pat her down, so I don’t think it’s any substance on her clothes that might be setting it off.

Of course, the last time we flew out of that particular airport, it seemed like they were patting down every single person who walked through that particular scanner, so who knows.

#15

To heck with the airport scanners–I want to know how these jokers can get a MRI–do they float in the tube?

#16

I have a dozen captive bead rings (CBRs) in my left ear, one in my right ear’s tragus. One robust CBR in my left nipple. They get removed if I need to have an MRI, other than that they stay put. The last time I had an MRI I had my piercer/friend remove them before and replace them after. I’ve never had a problem going through a metal detector.

As far as terminology, I’d call them “jewelry” or “CBRs”.

ETA: the term “joker” is mildly offensive, ******.

#17

This seems like as good a place as ever to tell this story. For background, as any of you who have had a body part pierced, the piercing jewelry is not supposed to be removed for several weeks after the piercing is done, lest the hole close up. (I did my earlobes when I was 12 and haven’t pierced anything since, and I am now 50, so I am a bit fuzzy on the details.)

Fast-forward to my early 20s. I arrived at a Christmas party at the house of a childhood friend, where another high school friend was excitedly waiting for me. “Come into the bathroom,” he said, “I have to show you something!” Curious as to why the bathroom was involved, I followed him, where he showed off his new navel piercing. I was kind of disgusted (I am pretty squeamish about unnecessary holes in body parts, and who knows, might not have even gotten my ears pierced if I were doing it over again.)

His reaction? “Oh, bummer, I though you would think it was cool. I guess I shouldn’t show you the other one, then.” (For full disclosure, as it were, the other one was in a location one would not normally show to someone with whom one was not sexually intimate, but this friend is gay and out to me. Not that I had the urge to see him naked anyway, and I had even less of an urge to see the new holes in his genitalia, but I digress.)
Not long after that, he called me in a panic because he just realized that he was about to go on a ski trip with his mom, which would involve air travel, and therefore the dreaded wand. He wasn’t out to his mom (and still isn’t AFAIK) and was freaking out at the prospect of the airport wand landing on his crotch with his mom watching. I have no idea how he resolved the issue.

#18

Lots of people can’t get MRIs for various reasons. I have a surgical plate in my leg and can’t do it for that reason. So I get CT scans instead. The MRI is not the only diagnostic tool out there.

#19

Underwire bras will often set off airport scanners.

#20

My navel piercing has never set off any airport detectors, and I’ve flown a fair bit. It’s something airport security see multiple times a day- a small bit of metal in a common piercing location isn’t going to set off anything any more than a zip would.

Maybe if he’d had 10 piercings down there or a 6" bar or something he’d get a search…