As you may or may not have heard, there has been a recent shake-up in the air travel industry. After finding out that the recent terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic flights was stopped in time, the immediate sense of relief quickly turned into concern about our safety on airlines, how to balance security with convenience and how air travel is feasible in this new era of terror.

So with all of these grave concerns facing us, I think the foremost worry on everyone’s mind is, “Yes, but what’s going to happen to Sini’s laptop?”

At least, if you think at all like my mom, it is. Other people might fear a terrible, fiery death, but my mom always keeps her eyes on the prize/laptop. The U.S. authorities, unlike British airlines, have not banned electronic devices, but according to her logic, there is no telling what will happen in the coming weeks. And the situation is already bad enough, with the current ban on non-solid forms of matter, which (in all seriousness) led to an in-depth argument with my mother about the physical state of various objects. While we could more or less agree on butter (though I hedged by saying it was a ‘semi-solid’), I had a hard time working up the indignation my mom felt about the classification of lipstick.

“Lipstick!” she said. “Women have had to throw away $60 tubes of lipstick! Lipstick isn’t a liquid! And wine,” my mom added in a tone of horror. “Expensive wine.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to leave the Beaujolais in Helsinki,” I said. “But I’m fairly sure that my laptop is classified as a solid.”

“But maybe they won’t let you take laptops on board anymore. And then you’ll just have to throw it away at security! In the trash! Like a used tissue!”

“Couldn’t I just check it in?”

“But all your bags will be checked in.”

“Won’t I have a laptop bag?”

“What if you travel without one? What will you do then?”

“Um... Are you suggesting that I might go the airport sans computer bag, with my laptop tucked rakishly under my arm?”

“I hear that’s the fashion in London,” my Dad said. “That’s why they had to throw them all away instead of checking them in.”

“Maybe some entrepreneur will take advantage of the situation to start buying laptops off people at airport security for $100 a pop,” my brother suggested.

“Airport security would never allow that to happen,” I objected. “I think Mom’s right. The way things are going, they’re just going to take the laptop from you and smash it with a hammer. Right in front of you. With a hammer. It’s for everyone’s safety.”

“If there’s a bomb inside the laptop, wouldn’t that be counterproductive?”

“The important thing is that people feel reassured,” I said.

But anyway, we all agreed that my laptop will either have to be checked in and freeze in the cargo compartment, then leak battery acid over all of my earthly possessions, or it will be smashed to pieces right in front of me.

Not that I’m maligning the Department of Homeland Security or the airport security guards in any way. When dealing with a threat as insidious and sly as the current terrorists are employing, every effort must be made to protect passengers against the threat, including forcing people to dump out all of their potentially volatile and explosive liquids in one huge barrel in the middle of the airport. And this is a position I would firmly defend whether or not I believed that the Department of Homeland Security uses the Internet to find dissidents and add their names to the list of those who have to be strip-searched when they go through airport security.

And I have to say, I think that everything will turn out all right. Hopefully they won’t ban electronic devices, but if they do, maybe I’ll take the advice of that nice Justin Long on the Apple commercials and finally switch over after my PC is destroyed. (I hear Macs are hammer-proof. They’re really better than PC’s in every way.) And for the benefit of anyone in the current administration, who might have come across this article while searching the Internet for the words “bomb,” “explosive,” and “airline,” I say: thank you for your dedication. And despite my funny name, I am a fully patriotic American citizen, who most certainly does not need to be put on the airport security black list.

Sini wrote this in the first flush of anxiety after the thwarted attacks and sent it an hour before leaving on a trip, so restrictions might have changed in the meantime. Worry about her laptop, however, will always remain. You can e-mail her at Sinim@stanford.edu.