Judi Franco ALWAYS flies out of Newark Airport with a suspicious device

When Newark Airport ground to a halt once again over the weekend while a suspicious package was being investigated (it turned out to be a recording device), it hit me thinking, I'm gonna be flying with my own suspicious device this weekend.

My husband.

Before 9/11 it was a hassle: getting stuck at airport security for the extra wand my husband required. After all, he has metal on him. All the time. 24/7/365. Or should I say IN him? I would just take a seat on those cozy metal benches with the gray plastic buckets on my lap and wait. And wait.

It's the titanium. The dreaded metal in his fake knee. We thought it was a blessing when they popped it in there in the year of 1999. When you could flash your medical card or just say "yeah I got a bum knee" when the metal detector went off, and that was the end of it.

But now, there's a whole lot of wanding going on.

Because after the machine beeps, they call us over and pull us to the side and ask a lot of questions. And wand some more. Meanwhile he now can't retrieve his filthy gray bin from the conveyer belt so I have to. And I'm trying to grab too much and stuff is piling up because I can't lift it all, and he's in the way because they're interviewing him and wanding every other joint in his body and all the while I'm thinking a guy with an actual weapon is getting through!

I juggle the overflowing bins and, shoeless of course, carry everything over to wait. Helpful people run over and bring me the things I've dropped along the way. I overhear Chubby TSA-ers talking to my hubby trying to understand. "Titellium? Tiranium?", they say, as my hubby tries to explain the dynamics of the prosthetic knee.

Eventually, he is released. Beaten. Wanded into a wrinkled mess. He has rolled his pant leg up, and it's still half up. He's removed more metal as they wand; his belt, his wedding band, a stray quarter that was in his back pocket. He returns and sits next to me, to begin the arduous process of putting it all back together again. Then we go back to the TSA agents to recover the ring or the watch or the one shoe he can't find cause I couldn't possibly carry EVERYTHING.

As I prepare to get on a plane this weekend, I ponder his knee replacement surgery and wonder, was the pain really that bad? Would plastic have worked? How many other spouses are sitting next to me, waiting, and contemplating a staycation the next time.

More from New Jersey 101.5: