Dear Transportation Security Administration:

I am a tall, blonde, female person – American – of a certain age (oh, let’s face it, I am elderly. I will be open with you about these things.)

I have written you three times before and gotten no answer. And, frankly, Transportation Security Administration, I am feeling a bit disregarded.

Let me say right away that I know you have a tough job guarding us from terrorists getting onto planes at our airports. You have certainly done a better job of it than whoever (is there someone?) is guarding our seaports with all those container packages being unloaded. And the subway guards in our cities. Well, there must be someone there at rush hour to check suspicious briefcases, don’t you think? Maybe your guys there are so slick we just don’t see them.

But we certainly see your brave men and women in their white Transportation Security Administration shirts with the epaulets standing guard at those cattle gates at the airport while we strip down to our undies to pass through the metal detectors.

Let me just ask here (I spent enough years in the military to know a drill sergeant’s voice when I hear one) do you get your training in personnel handling from the Marines? Good idea. Especially searching someone with a limp and a cane. You just never know when a white-haired terrorist will try to slip an explosive through in his prosthetic knee brace.

I myself must be hand-searched by a female guard (when one is available) each time I go through the metal detector because I broke my hip and ankle when I was mugged while visiting London several years ago. Unfortunate, really, although Her Majesty’s government paid me several thousand pounds for the insult (something the British do – which we don’t do here – for victims of assault). Point is, I now have metal in my body which triggers your machines each time I try to get on a plane.

Apparently, Transportation Security Administration, your brand new machines – the ones you are now trying out at O’Hare and other busy airports – which allow your guards to see straight through to the clavicle sans any clothes at all (hey, I’m no prude, have fun with those) don’t distinguish between a titanium hip replacement and a machine gun. And so we ancient or bent ones, and there are more and more of us now, must be ordered to a “secure” area while others in line stare impatiently. We are spreadeagled, and “patted down” – all with the greatest respect, of course – and spoken to in tones reminiscent of old prison camp movies.

It doesn’t help to have a doctor’s certificate because “those can be forged”. Right. Or even a military service ID card (I am a retired Air Force major). That too, apparently, can be forged. Although I’m danged if I can see how.

Dear TSA (may I call you that?), I really understood when you confiscated my Boucheron perfume bottle (it’s still at the airport somewhere, I suppose, or improving the atmosphere around one of your stalwart female inspectors). And I – sort of – understood when my supply of shampoo for a two-week trip to London was taken from me, along with half of my makeup (it was, I was told, in a too-large plastic bag).

In London, this is just for your info, at Healthrow they have actually let me onboard without a body search. As I say, I’m not implying anything un-American here, but have you checked with British Airways, or even EL AL, on their security procedures?

Yes, I realize that we haven’t had a plane blown up since 9/11. Could it be that the terrorists are just sitting back and laughing at the things we put our very own frequent flyers through, that they are figuring maybe that’s terrorism enough, that the only time we’ve had to land a plane in an emergency because a passenger was “acting like a terrorist” was when a passenger either got drunk, or frustrated (I mean, they’re changing for water now on board, aren’t they?), or made a pass at an attendant, or was just nuts?

Just asking. And thank you for your attention.

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Dorothy Storck is an award-winning former Chicago and foreign correspondent

and a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer