Watch list

My little trip to the sacred soil of Virgina, as Southerners used to say, but pretty much don’t any more, produced several oddities. The most surprising was discovering before takeoff from Austin that my name was on the watch list. The ticket agent checked my driver’s license and said it was someone else, so I’m off as far as Southwest is concerned. But it delayed getting a boarding pass and so I was one of the last on board for SW’s unassigned seating. It insured a middle seat, between a burly Maryland fireman coming back from a convention in Texas, and a young fellow who wore headphones the  whole way. I still don’t know what to think about the watch listing. A convert jihadi, perhaps?