The full-body scanners have finally come to our airport, so now they can look under your clothing and directly into your body. If you calm your nerves for a flight by chewing screws and wires, you're in for trouble. The rest of you will probably not care, because there's a good chance it will speed up security and a medium chance you will all stand around the monitor watching the pictures, pointing and laughing or making ooh-la-la sounds. But do you feel safer?

Maybe. I don't know anyone who feels that the rules at the security checkpoint accomplish much, except for making you leave for the airport two hours early. (There's no panic like being 20 minutes away from your flight and standing behind someone wearing thigh-high lace-up boots.)

The rules right now do not reassure: 3 ounces of hand sanitizer are OK, but 3.1 ounces can apparently bring down a plane. But you have to ask why any terrorist would try to smuggle on an explosive; just run your iPod during take-off, because apparently they are powerful enough to interfere with the delicate electronics and make the plane corkscrew into the ground. I keep waiting for the day a terrorist stands in the aisle, opens his shirt, and reveals he has 26 iPods taped to his chest. You know what? He'd be barefoot, too. No shoes. In fact he got through the line faster because he was barefoot.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: at the end of every security line, there should be a statue of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, so you could throw your shoes at his head before you put them on. Or maybe there should be Mr. Reid himself. He's not doing anything. Rotate him around from airport to airport. You might think he would relish the attention, seeing what mischief he caused, but after a few days in Newark watching the 10th group of kids wearing Doc Martin boots come through the line, he may change his tune.

The security dance isn't just humiliating, it makes you lie to your kids. Why are we taking off our shoes? Because they don't want the plane to get dirty, and they're checking the soles. Oh. Eventually they catch on. Right, Dad. And that animal by the side of the road is sleeping. Uh huh. At this point the pleasures of flying -- which do exist for little kids, since the seats are made exactly for them -- becomes replaced with the idea that there are people out there who want to blow up your plane. Welcome to adulthood, way ahead of schedule. Enjoy your trip.

Then there's the faith we place in the magic scrap of paper, the Boarding Pass. Once I lost my pass after I'd passed through, but I always print off a duplicate just in case. Then I realized it did not have the Official Squiggle. You know what I mean: when you present it to the TSA agent, they look at the boarding pass you printed off from your home computer and compare the name with your license. It matches! Well, that settles it. Then they make the Official Squiggle, which tells the next person who looks at the paper that someone else has looked at the paper. So what would happen if I presented a boarding pass without the Squiggle? For a moment I actually considered writing my own Squiggle, but I'm sure you would end up as the sole resident of the World of Hurt, orbiting the planet "Jail," so I just handed it over and braced for the worst.

Waved right on. That was the day I lost my faith in the Squiggle.

So I don't mind the full-body scanners, if it speeds things up. But someone's going to smuggle something in his tonsils, then fail to ignite them -- smoke will pour out of his mouth, and that's it -- and then we'll all have to have our tonsils taken out. No big deal, you say, mine were taken out as a kid. And I got ice cream afterwards. But if you haven't had them removed, that will be the final step of the security dance: you'll have your tonsils taken out on the spot, handed a cup of soft-serve, and made to go through the line again. And should someone save the spoon and try to use it to threaten a flight attendant, we'll be licking the stuff.

Or driving.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks