Three Point Four Ounces (A Big Band Number)
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Three Point Four Ounces (A Big Band Number)
Every traveler in America has heard this sentence recited like scripture at the security checkpoint: 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) or less per item. 1 It is the most repeated measurement in the country that no one has ever measured anything with. This song takes the entire rule — the quart-sized bag, the bins, the millimeter wave, the pat-down — and performs it as a 1940s big-band swing number, with a crooner in a tuxedo and a close-harmony trio answering him like a horn section that learned to talk.
The band is at 178 BPM and completely delighted to be there: riffing brass, a walking upright bass, a swinging ride cymbal, comping piano, handclaps on the backbeat. The singer's diction stays crisp and official the whole way through, because the joke only works if nobody in the room admits it is a joke. He is announcing a security procedure. He is also, unmistakably, having the night of his life.
The checklist becomes the lyric sheet. The agency screens roughly 3.3 million carry-on bags a day, so there is plenty of material. Personal electronic devices larger than a cell phone come out and go into a bin with nothing on or under them — laptops, tablets, e-readers, handheld game consoles — but not hair dryers, electric shavers, or electric toothbrushes, which get their own roll call in the pre-chorus. 2 The bridge of the song is the pat-down: an officer of the same sex, who will advise you of the procedure "to help you anticipate any actions before you feel them." That last line is sung slowly, twice, and it is possibly the most tender sentence the federal government has ever written.
The middle of the song goes through the millimeter wave machine, and there it finds something unexpectedly beautiful. The scanner builds an outline of a person that is identical for all passengers — the same generic body for a CEO, a toddler, and a man who forgot he was carrying a full bottle of shampoo. 2 You are allowed to decline the machine in favor of a physical screening, but no individual is guaranteed expedited screening, and the song holds that note the way a swing band holds a final chord.
Play it in the security line with your shoes in your hand. Play it while you pack a quart-sized bag the night before a flight. Play it any time you have said "it's just toiletries" to a stranger wearing gloves. Then put your liquids in the bin and step through.
References
- 1
- 2TSA — Security Screening
tsa.gov
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