Exactly, this is disgusting, and beyond stupid. My daughter is about 5 years old mentally. This would be highly upsetting to her and trying to explain why someone would do this would be near impossible for her to understand. My daughter loves rubbery things, the texture and feel of it. Like balloons and such. Once when she was getting her blood drawn she wanted to keep that rubber band they put on your arm. The tech wanted it back, he was young and learned a very hard lesson that day. They played tug of war for a few seconds and he said, let go, she did and he got snapped right in the face. One can only dream that would happen to one of those TSA agents trying to pull something like that on her ;)
You daughter would have been tased and incarcerated.
I worked at a state mental hospital back in the late 80s for a couple years as a therapy aide with the more aggressive and violent retarded patients (refered to then as ‘clients’) We had one client that had a ball. When new people went on the unit they were told in no uncertain terms “Do not touch it” unless he wants to play catch.
And to put it mildly, you go NOT want an otherwise calm and peaceful 22 year old person of limited mental capacity freaking out simply because some TSA moron decided to be a smart ass.
Even the non-violent who are attached to an item like that can go off when it gets taken away. Doing so by a total stranger, is among the most evil things I can think of. I have zero tolerance for idiots like that.