Communicators, how much confidence do you have in the people and machines that screen carry-on luggage at the airports? When you travel on business, do you feel fairly confident that the security system can at least keep things like swords and hatchets off your plane?

Well . . . think again. Wait until you hear this story.

I was flying to Raleigh, North Carolina this week, to do some work with Golden Corral, a restaurant company that has franchises all across North America. Since I was only spending one night, I didn't check any bags. I had my briefcase, and a backpack for my clothes.

At O'Hare, I went through the security gate no problem. Nobody gave me a second look, and both of my bags skated through the metal detector. Coming home, it wasn't that easy. Either the machine or the guy running it didn't like something in my backpack, so they stopped it for a more comprehensive check.

'We need to go through this,' one of the security guards said.

Now, you have to understand, I'm petrified of flying. I usually have to wash down a Xanax with two or three martinis before I'll even go online to book a flight, let alone actually get on one of those death carriages.

So I never object to extra security. If they wanted to strip-search me every time I flew anywhere, that would be fine with me. It might not be fine with the people around me . . . but I can't worry about them, can I? After all, they may be terrorists.

'Hey, do whatever you need to do,' I said to the guy. 'Just keep us safe, OK?' (Actually, I'd already done the whole Xanax/martini thing at this point, so it probably sounded more like, 'Jesh keep ess safe, hokay?')

So the man put on the rubber gloves, and started digging through all the dirty clothes in my backpack. After about five minutes of that, he decided to dump everything out. He put all my clothes in one bin, and the now-empty backpack in another bin, and ran them both through the machine again.

This time, they both passed with flying colors. When I got home, I unpacked the backpack myself. And there, in the bottom, was a six-inch, razor-sharp steak knife. Not a folding knife that the security people might have confused with one of those trick-shop, switchblade combs. This was an actual steak knife, with a huge, serrated-edge blade.

Truth be told, it was (I'm not making this up) one of those 'Miracle Blade' knives they sell on TV. You know, the ones that can cut through metal. It is practically a bayonet.

I had stuck it in there for a picnic with my son, because it can cut the hell out of apples and cheese—to say nothing of a pilot's throat. Then I obviously forgot about it.

I'm still trying to figure out which is scarier: that O'Hare—the busiest airport in the world—missed the knife completely, or that the folks in Raleigh actually ran the backpack through with just the knife in it and still missed it.

Think about that: It was just the backpack . . . and a huge knife. Nothing else. Just the two of them. And they went through a metal detector and past a pair of human eyes that were specifically looking for something suspicious.

And they missed it. Xanax, anyone?