The overhead rack

The following editorial appeared recently in the New York Times:

Every day, thousands of Americans participate in a grueling airplane ritual that tests their problem-solving skills and upper-arm endurance. It is called "Stowing the Carry-Ons," or, "If I Give This Footlocker a Half-Turn and Push Even Harder, Maybe in 20 Minutes Its Rigid Vertical Dimensions Will Magically Shrink, and Then I Can Sit Down and Let These Angry People Pass."

"Kill, kill, kill," wrote John Updike in a nicely spiteful poem about watching beer-breathy businessmen "crowding their slick and swollen bags and egos onto my airplane, my tube in space, my clean shot home."

He wrote it well before airlines started charging for checked bags, causing flying to sink even further below the standards of bus travel in the developing world. Once we were sophisticated voyagers, flying across continents in elegant ease. Now we're the Joads.

Go ahead and blame the airlines, whose carry-on rules fail ludicrously and whose baggage fees make the problem worse, but that won't solve anything. We could ask passengers to be less thoughtless, less inept in packing and less addicted to stuff. But that won't happen.

Is there any hope at all? Well, there's Congress. Rep. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois introduced a bill in June that would limit passengers to "only one carry-on bag and one personal item, the dimensions of each, when loaded, shall not exceed 56 centimeters in length by 45 centimeters in height by 25 centimeters in width."

Don't bother measuring. It may not be enough for the bag with your souvenir sombrero, three months' Slim Fast and your bowling ball, but it's plenty. How would it be enforced? With a template that fits over the security machine. If your bag is too big, it won't go through.

It's a simple but smart idea to enforce carry-on rules at the security checkpoint, not on the plane. In a world that involves so many trade-offs, so many brain-numbing indignities and tests of patience, this is a plan worth lining up behind.