Microbiology.

I need to figure out my back up plan  if I don't make any friends with the princesses at Disney. The other day I was standing in line at airport security and let my brain wander into a tangent of me becoming a microbiologist.  I would of course go to grad school, and make sure I went the thesis route, because I have a stellar topic for a thesis or not sure what the technical term is, but like a study.

I have a problem with taking my shoes off for the TSA. My 3 year old, Old Navy, foam flip-flops cannot hide bombs or metal objects. I normally wear easy to remove shoes, flip flops or flats, sometimes I wear boots but I don't like soiled socks to touch my shoes (soiled from the TSA's floor). I stand on my tip toes or lateral side of my feet while I'm disrobing and through the scanner. But here is my study that relates for Microbiology. I will describe using the scientific method.

Question: Is it safe to remove our shoes at all?

Observation: Everyone is required to remove their shoes for the TSA, excluding children and old people (both groups of suspicious individuals I'd say) All those 13-75 year olds remove their shoes, half with socks half barefoot. Men and older people tend to wear socks, while women typically go barefoot. Now I have hypothesis.

Hypotheses: I hypothesize that due to the thousands of barefoot and socked individuals that pass through the TSA disrobing area and scanner, has led the floor to be contaminated with bacteria. I also suspect that the area is not sanitized often (if not ever). (Hence sleeping in airports and never seeing this take place.)

Test: I will start by swabbing the floors of the disrobing areas as well as the foot markers  in the scanner of 5 major US airports: ATL, LAX, MSP, JFK, SLC, DFW (DFW already offer booties to travelers). I will then monitor the growth of bacteria via petri dish.

Results: There will be rampant bacteria growing in my petri dishes. These dishes I will send back to the lab, where will find bacterial evidence of athletes foot, the plague, ecoli bacteria, ebola, and flesh eating bacteria.

I will then tell the world of my findings and airports will be forced to to scrub the floor hourly with a strong disinfectent and provide clean booties for everyone to wear. Wearing booties through security will be mandatory.

The end. I Hope the TSA dies.

OH! Here is a letter I wrote the TSA a few years ago. Sorry for the language and graphicness of it...and spelling errors. I wasn't in the right state of mind. Just sometimes your get butt gets pat down enough times you hit a breaking point, and write a crazy letter to them. Again apologies. I do wear underwear in public and when I travel.