When I was flying back out of Tel Aviv, I again got interrogated and tapped for special inspection in the back room. While the El Al gnomes (much more friendly and, truth, attractive gnomes than the previous) were tearing apart my bag and the bag I was carrying back for Nicole, one of the senior agents was asking me about items in my luggage (they were much more interested in Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem than in the souvenir dagger with a 12” blade). At one point, he hefted a cubit-long cylindrical device trailing a power cord.

“And what is this?”

“That,” I said, recognizing an electrical gadget from Nicole’s bag, “is a personal massage device.”

Two blushing female faces glanced up from searching my bags, glanced back down.

“Does it work?” he asked, a standard question for electronic devices. The thought is presumably that a particularly inept terrorist will have simply hollowed one out and filled it with C-4 or drugs or Nutella (ugh) or some other nastiness.

This was the moment I realized my penchant for puns and double entendre may very well, much as a friend’s father once warned him, get me killed one day. But I figured they had already decided whether to let me leave the country, so what the heck?

“I was told it does. Go ahead and try it, if you like.”