Long-time audiologist and educator Roy Sullivan, PhD, emailed The Hearing Review this surprising story:
A long-term patient of mine is a very credible, middle-aged Cistercian nun with a successfully aided severe hearing impairment who wears a full, traditional, religious white habit with veil. She reported a recent airport exchange with the ever-vigilant TSA. At the security check-in, her key-ring, containing keys as well as a plastic holder for two A312 hearing aid batteries and a penknife, became an object of intense scrutiny. The TSA inspectors removed and confiscated the battery holder with spare batteries, returning the rest of the key-ring and contents to the nun. When she inquired as to why they appropriated her spare hearing aid batteries but not the penknife, the TSA agent sagaciously replied “You could build a bomb with those batteries!”
Dr Sullivan noted, “Were she a terrorist, imagine what havoc she could have wrought with her rosary beads!” —KES
