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You know you're over the hill when you can't even get a pat down from the TSA.

Last weekend, my sweetheart Steve and I stood in the security line at the Oakland airport on our way to Los Angeles to visit his son. I hadn't been there in over a year, and I now noticed that they had installed one of those dreaded X-ray machines.

I carefully read all the signs informing passengers that they could choose either: a) to be radiated by a machine that emits "back scatter," or b) to submit to a pat down. I'd heard awful stories about people getting patted down, but I figured it would involve only a few minutes of humiliation and might even be fun if I got the cute screener guy. Radiation, however, is forever.

"I think I'll take the pat down," I said to Steve in a faux perky tone, a smile on my face. Whenever I'm faced with two equally bad options I like to act as if I am in charge, as though I am the one making the decision, not a bunch of thoughtless legislators 3,000 miles away.

"Now you're scaring me," he said.

"Well, are you going to let them radiate you?"

"Haven't decided yet."

We inched closer and closer to the officer checking our boarding passes and photo ID's. After he handed back my documents, I quickly scooted over toward the conveyor belt where the cute guy was sitting and squinting at X-ray pictures of the items cruising through before him. I grabbed a plastic bin for my shoes, one for my fanny pack and another for my baggie full of makeup, toothpaste and hand sanitizer.

I adopted my most harmless smile and waited for The Handsome Man in Uniform to wave me on. When he did, I marched up to the woman standing on the other side of the arch and said, "I'd like the pat down, please." She stared, silent. Maybe she didn't understand.

"You know, instead of the X-ray machine?"

"You don't have to do that," she said, finally. "See that machine over there?" I glanced to my right. "That's where you'd have been sent if they had wanted to look at you further."

Here's where all of my perky bravado evaporated, replaced by a helpless confusion which she must have noticed because she turned to another uniformed TSA guard and hollered, "Hey, Cindy, this here woman says she wants a pat down." Big Cindy laughed.

In real time this interchange lasted only a few seconds, but in my mind my cheeks had been burning for hours. Suspended in that awful state of "I-know-I'm- screwing-up-but-don't-know-how-to-get-out-of-this-alive," I just smiled. Well of course, Ma'am, that was just a little joke. Please don't shoot me.

As I walked through the archway, I couldn't help but feel as if I'd been transported back to high school when I was as un-cool as they come, desperately wanting Eugene Stropes, a senior to my sophomore, to like me. He sat in front of me in Latin class and whenever he would turn around to get an answer from me, my pathetic little heart flipped. One day, just before class, he whispered to me, "Did you hear the one about the newlyweds who didn't know the difference between Vaseline and putty?"

"N-no," I stammered.

"All their windows fell out," he said, his black eyes on fire.

Silence.

"Their windows fell out," he repeated. "Get it?"

"Oh, now, I . . . sure," I lied and nodded. "Funny." I think I was 21 before that made any sense.

I met up with Steve on the other side of the arch.

"Did you get the X-ray?" I said as I fetched my belongings from the conveyor belt.

"No," he said. "You?"

"They never patted me down," I whispered behind my hand.

"You sound disappointed."

"Well, geez, what does a girl have to do to get felt up by a stranger these days? I mean, if the TSA won't even pat me down, well . . . " I sighed, and threw up my hands.

Time to fatten up my cosmetic surgery fund.

- Rosie Sorenson

Rosie Sorenson is the award-winning author of They Had Me at Meow:Tails of Love from the Homeless Cats of Buster Hollow. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and others. In 2007, she won an honorable mention in the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition.