You know you can't have: liquids

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If I'm to believe my parents, it appears that "liquid" was my first word. Sentimentality aside, I've always accepted that liquids would be instrumental in my life. But I was never sure how...I'm quite certain that everyone in this country is painfully aware of the apparently infinite guises of liquids-that-must-not-pass-airline-security. And it's possible that at one point or another, some of you have been informed of the necessity of a plastic baggie. Now, I'm so completely fine complying with federal safety guidelines, but I do find it irksome and maybe even troublesome when different airlines have their own, entirely changeable conceptions of what, precisely, constitutes a liquid.

For instance, today I was traveling with my one carry-on and purse, the contents of which revealed: a vial of eye drops and three different kinds of lip glosses (in my kind of OCD, I make my drug store purchases in triplication). And though I have--very recently!--booked travel out of almost all of our country's starting line-up of airports, I've learned to properly and even expertly utilize my baggie for any contraband, and I have never been sequestered for lip gloss (though, read on: I should have been). After they confiscated my triumvirate of glosses and my eye drops, I was free to leave, but then one of the officials returned my eye drops. (I later learned that under 4 fl. oz is okay, but all of my glosses were way under 4 fl. oz and eye drops are just--I don't know--much more representative of liquid! Maybe there was a special fatwa issued just for beauty gels today. Who knows.)

But it seems I actually was getting away with murder before, since according to this list of US Government Guidelines, you definitely can't have lip glosses of any kind. I once sat next to a woman on a plane who was bragging about all the kinds of liquids she still retained on her person, and people didn't really know what to say to her. Have any of you walked away from airline security confused about what just happened and/or have you ever "gotten away with" (in the inadvertent, you-did-just-X-ray-my-bag way) liquids/gels?