by TONY DEYAL

I SUPPOSE I WAS feeling blackadaiscal or had a momentary blackout. Whatever it was, that Sunday morning, on my way to the Miami airport to catch an American Airlines flight to Kingston, I was wearing black unrelieved by the infusion of any other colour, hue, tint, shade or tinge to my wardrobe. In passing, we should note my increasing sophistication.

When I was young, "wardrobe" meant a huge, standing, wooden receptacle, generally with two doors, one of which inevitably had a cracked mirror. One of the mysteries of life at that time was why almost every wardrobe I had known or seen in our house and those of my friends seemed to have a cracked mirror.

The "wardrobe" held all the family's clothes except for those that were on the line waiting for sunshine, or those that needed to be ironed.

In those days, the "iron" was just that – real, solid iron thrust into the coal pot or the fireside and heated until almost red hot. You then took a piece of cloth, wrapped it around the handle, and proceeded as quickly as possible to run the iron over the clothes with brief interruptions for reheating the said implement.

We were four families living in my grandmother's four bedroom house so that we always had too many irons in the fire.

Now having reached man's "estate", my wardrobe is what used to be inside my wardrobe; and even though my financial cupboard is bare, whatever I own is my estate even though in my early days an estate was a huge tract of land on which cane was grown.

So wardrobe on my back, my estate in my hip-pocket, my clothes ironed, my black Hush Puppies squelching noisily on the tiled floor, I ventured forth to the armpit of the Universe – Miami International Airport (MIA). Eventually, for Sunday mornings at MIA are more crowded than usual, I reached the desk where a harried desk jockey checked me in and directed me to the gate. She did not mention that she had placed on my boarding pass the dreaded letters "SSSS".

In pre-war Germany there was once the Schutzstaffel (German for "protective squadron") better known as the SS. This is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"A major Nazi military organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party . . . . Built upon the Nazi racist ideology, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler's command, was primarily responsible for the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.

"Under Himmler, the SS selected members according to the "Aryan" racist ideology. Developing elite police and military units such as the Waffen SS, Himmler also used the SS to develop an order of men claimed to be superior in racial purity and abilities than other Germans and national groups, the model for the Nazi vision of a 'master race'."

Here I was, in Miami Airport, a bastion of the land of the free and home of the brave and handed not one "SS" but two in close succession. According to the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) of the United States Department of Homeland Security the double SS stands for, "Selected for Secondary Security Screening".

The question in my case is, "Why? Why me?"

I understand that the TSA claims the SSSS scarlet letter is "random". This is interesting because this is now twice in two trips out of the United States that I have been so branded. If you take the number of travellers using American Airlines and the fact that in my two trips I have hit the jackpot both times, had this been a lottery I would have been a billionaire in the Bill Gates league.

As it was, I won a "booby-prize" and I don't mean that I was lucky enough to have received an attractive portion of the female anatomy. In fact, it was my anatomy on the line – a special line for SSSS holders.

My boarding pass and passport were taken from me. I had to pass through the "puffer" machine. I had to stand and wait for a while and then had to sit while my bag and sundries were swabbed and analysed.

What was noticeable was the terseness and intensity of the TSA person who handled this chore. It was clear that he wanted me very badly to be a hijacker or suicide bomber and was extremely disappointed when I turned out to be what I am – a chubby, mostly bald, senior citizen dressed in black.

There was no dynamite strapped to my derriere, no bomb in my briefcase, no semtex in my shorts, no plastique in my possession, and the only explosive was my increasing temper.

I eventually worked it out that this was a Sunday. One of the earliest terrorist novels and movies was Black Sunday. I was dressed in black and had a Blackberry in my hand. My bags were black and I am, by the very fact that I am not white and my mindset is Caribbean, very black indeed.

I then remembered that my wife Indranie, long hair loose, in black jeans and kurta (Indian-styled shirt) went through the same problem once as we were leaving Orlando after a family vacation.

I still wonder why I have no problem entering the United States but am SSSS'd only on leaving. I also wonder if I had the same surname as my Latin teacher, Mr Blackman, or my predecessor Chairman of Canada Hall in the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, Mr Blackwood, or former media man Mr Ablack, or even Sparrow's "godchild" Erasmus B. Black, what would they have done to me?

Most likely I would have been taken into a dark room and beaten, not black and blue, but black and black and black again.

Next reincarnation I want to be born on the Fourth of July.

* Tony Deyal was last seen saying that the double SS who are in charge of Homeland Security may be able to stop him from saying "Yo Mama" to them, but they can't stop Obama or catch Osama.