So I was sitting in the airport, flying home from my university for our winter holiday break. I was stuck with one of those agonizingly long 5+ hour layovers that tend to happen that time of year when flights start getting delayed/canceled, so I decided to pass the time by watching some cheesy action movies on my laptop.
My plane finally lands and they start to refuel it and all that jazz. The lady at the gate gets on the intercom and informs us that the plane isn't going to have enough overhead space for everyone's luggage and asks for people to volunteer to check their bags. I travel fairly light. I had just my carry-on bag and a small rolling suitcase that I normally put in the overhead storage.
I decided to be nice that day and volunteer... that and I was in the very last boarding zone, so chances are there would be no space left by the time I got on the plane anyway. The main reason I don't normally like checking my bags is admittedly because I'm terrified of the airline losing my stuff, so with that in mind, I decided to take my laptop's power cable out of my suitcase and put it into my carry-on bag. I head up to the desk and volunteer, then go back to my seat.
Not even two minutes later I had a airport security guards shouting at me and threatening me if I moved. A few minutes after that a very embarrassed guard apologizes to me and they all scamper. An old woman, easily in her 80's, walks up to me and apologizes too. Apparently she saw that I was wearing military-issue woodland camo BDU pants and thought that my laptop power cable that I put into my carry-on bag was a component to a bomb, so she reported me.
And that, folks, is the story of how I (for a few months, anyway) wound up on the No-Fly List.