Everything old is new again

It's amazing how quickly we get used to the new normal.When I was a kid, my family traveled a lot. Sometimes by car, often by plane. We would visit my dad's family in London and my mom's cousins in California. Later on, in college, I'd fly back and forth between New York and Chicago (and later San Diego and Chicago.Going through airline security was never a joy, mind you, but it was relatively easy. Stand on line, show your boarding pass, go through the metal detector and walk on to the gate.Maybe we  had to take our belts off? I can't remember. We did have to take off our watches and empty our pockets, that much I remember. Since the post-Sept. 11 era, we've gotten used to the idea that removing our shoes, jackets, belts, jackets and taking our laptops out of their bags was just part of the cost of flying. (Plus those kind of invasive body scanners we have to stand in, our arms raised above our heads.)In some ways it is, really, just part of the cost of flying. Most of it feels like a small price to pay, though there's a lot of question as to whether most of these measures actually make us any safer. (I'll dig up some of those links later and add them in here, if I have time.)I finally signed up for TSA Pre-Check (yeah, yeah, what took me so long) and went through security (I've gotten it randomly several times over the years, and it was nice, but seems as if it's gotten even better now, having completely separate security areas (in Newark, at least). After I walked through security today, though, I realized it seemed familiar.Why did it seem familiar? Because it felt just like how going on airplanes used to feel. Put my stuff on the conveyor belt, walk through the metal detector, go to my gate.The only real difference from those times? You used to be able to go through to the gate even if you didn't have a boarding pass. You'd sit there with your friend, significant other, or family member until you had to take off. Figure it make as much sense to do that anymore, given that we'd just probably sit there staring at our phones anyway,Photo by StockUnlimited.