Several years ago, I was at London Heathrow Airport connecting flights. Although normally connecting flights is easy, because my two flights were operated by different airlines, I had to go through the border control once before doing the full check-in procedure all over again.
As soon as I got out of the arrival door with my luggage, I walked up straight to the departure floor, dropping off my checked-in luggage and running to the security check with my backpack. The boarding of my next flight had already started, and I had no time to lose.
I saw my backpack and electronic devices disappear into the scanner, then hurried through the body-check gate, which thankfully didn’t beep. I quickly made my way to the other side of the scanner ready to pick up my tray when I realized that my backpack had gone to the suspicious pile. A sturdy-looking officer was grabbing my backpack.
“Whose is this?”
Holding back a sigh of frustration, I went to the counter to face him and my backpack. With my permission, he was going to open it and check the content one by one until he found what had caused the scanner to beep. I nodded my permission.
The moment the officer unzipped my backpack, fluffy things burst out of it, dropping on the metal counter. They were my stuffed animals that I always carried with me on my travels: one dog, one rabbit, and one moose deep in thought. Never had I imagined that they would be exposed to the public eye like this.
But the officer showed no reaction to the sudden appearance of the three merry figures. He continued his investigation with a straight face while my stuffed animals lay on the metal counter with happy smiles.
Finally, he found a tiny metal pencil sharpener in my pencil case. That was the source of suspicion.
As soon as the officer left, I quickly threw everything back into my backpack. It was both a relief and a shock that nobody seemed to care about stuffed animals coming out of the bag of a solo adult traveller.