The timing couldn’t have been worse.

I was 19 years old and heading back from a Springsteen concert in D.C. There was some kind of mix-up at the airport in Newark which involved a horrible mutilation of my name over the public address system.

“Mark Laugh All Of May please come to the Gate 8. Mark Lamp Lame Mommy, Gate 8.”

So I missed the page and ended up stuck in Newark for more than 24 hours.

I don’t know what that airport is like now because I will go out of my way to skirt it, even if it means traveling around New Jersey by donkey.

Back then, the Newark airport was a hellish place with sweaty concrete walls and carpeting that smelled like a locker room for Sumo wrestlers. There was absolutely nothing to look at other than the skeletal remains of travelers who had been stuck there since Amelia Earhart was a pilot.

Step outside the doors (that was back in the day when you could still wander in and out of an airport without being picked off by snipers) and you’d be instantly accosted by men in long trench coats who welcomed you to the city by whispering: “Psssst. You wanna buy a watch?”

Horrible place. The only respite for the trapped traveler was a bar where you could try to drink away the knowledge that you were stuck in Newark. But the drinking age was 21 and I was a couple years short. I tried using a discarded M&Ms wrapper as a fake mustache but the bartender wasn’t buying it. And so for a full day, I sat in a hard chair reading the same “Alfred Hitchcock Mysteries” over and over while my brother, the worm, was off at the bar meeting new and interesting people. I wished upon him some terrible Newark disease contracted through beer coasters, but it never came through.

I hate airports. The very first time I flew, I didn’t marvel over the wonder of air travel and ponder man’s conquering of time and space. I thought: “I just stood in a line for two hours to get crammed into a tube next to a woman with a baby who clearly hates me.”

And that was back in a time when boarding an airplane was reasonably simple. Now we have idiots sneaking explosives in plastic bottles and others trying to use their bodies as bomb fuses. And every time it happens the feds notch it as a win for the terrorists by imposing more restrictions on the way we travel.

They’re already talking about limiting further the movement that passengers will be allowed. No more trips to the overhead compartment for the nasal spray. No more awkward trip up the aisles to the bathrooms, feeling like a mouse in the throat of a snake, in the last hour of the flight.

Airlines will start handing out confusion rather than little bags of peanuts. Can you bring your Snuggie and stress ball on a domestic flight or have those things been banned in the wake of the latest foiled plot? Do you remove shoes and socks at the security gate or just the shoes? Why have you been randomly selected for a full body smack down for the second time this year?

Soon we’ll start hearing the stories. An 80-year-old woman named Dora will miss her 60th wedding anniversary party because her name got flagged at the airport. Dora will spend nine hours getting grilled by men in sunglasses while some lunatic, whose name is on a federal watch list and whose own father ratted him out as an extremist, walks onto the airplane with explosives stuffed into his dental work or some damn thing.

The friendly skies have changed a great deal since the year of the Boss concert, is all I’m saying. Back then, I got hopelessly stuck in the swamp of Newark because some fool couldn’t pronounce my name. Today, there are a thousand obstacles between you and the sunny destination stamped on your flight ticket.

Sometimes I’m thankful I have no place to go.