Louie's page

Fearful Vigilante Citizens Inspect Each Others' Shoes!

A surprising trend is spreading among air travelers these days. In the wake of the capture of exploding-shoe suspect, Richard Reid, travelers are stopping one another to examine each others' shoes for explosives.

"I don't mind at all," says traveler Ahmed Muhir. "I think it's a natural reflex considering what happened last week. It was a little scary when a bunch of Americans stopped me and made me take my shoes off." Muhir said. "They made a circle around me and made me shake them upside down."

"I thought it was a mime act or something," one passenger told reporters. "They were all around him like he was doing a magic trick."

"I put a dollar in his hat." Said one young boy. "He didn't do any tricks. I was mad."

One police official, declining to be identified, told us that he was worried about this wave of citizen searches starting a new trend of "sidewalk vigilantism." "What next, lynch mobs?" the official asked.

"One nice thing," said traveler Iris Sturm, of Oakland, California, "...is that it brings us together as a community. It's heartwarming to see a family of American travelers walk up to someone from another country and take off their own shoes and hold them upside down as a gesture of good faith... a sort of salute, only with shoes. The tears in each others' eyes... It brings us all together."