WATER BOTTLE CAPS TOP IT ALL AS SAFETY THREATS.

Byline: Ray Richmond LOCAL VIEW

STANDING in line outside Staples Center with my 13-year-old daughter some 90 minutes before the Britney Spears concert on Nov. 21, the security phalanx appeared formidable. Men in official-looking suits were everywhere, barking into walkie-talkies, holstered weaponry at the ready.

Airport-style metal detectors loomed at the arena entrance, where scowling men holding scanning wands outnumbered the staffers taking tickets. We surely have become a different country in this post-Sept. 11 world, I quietly observed. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Then came the moment 15 minutes later when I accompanied my daughter to the arena concession stand to purchase dinner, whence I was reminded that this is still very much America we're living in after all.

We ordered small pizzas and bottles of Aquafina water. While retrieving the water, however, the woman behind the counter cautioned that she would ``have to remove the cap and toss it out'' before handing over the agua.

As this sounded like a peculiar task to have to perform - and perhaps even odder to precede it with a verbal disclaimer - I was moved to ask, Is there some specific reason why we can't be trusted to open our own water?

Could someone have figured out a way to turn these benign white plastic caps into hurling weapons? Might they have been found to be a baby choking hazard?

No on both counts.

``We're required to say what we say and remove the cap because someone complained a couple of months ago,'' the concession lady explained.

``Complained about what, exactly?'' I asked, still decidedly befuddled.

``They cut themselves opening the water and sued,'' she replied.

Now I was really dumbfounded.

``And you would be ... serious?''

Indeed the woman was. She did as she was required, removing the tops from the pair of water bottles and finally serving them. My daughter's jaw literally dropped as she commented, ``That is just soretarded.''

So it was.

Thus, the personal-size drinking water bottle cap has evidently now joined the box cutter and the nail file as an instrument of personal injury/harm. It is inspiring to know that Staples Center has been thrust onto the cutting edge (so to speak) of the fledgling movement to protect the public from this deceptively dangerous round of molded plastic.

It can't be long before an outcry erupts over such long-ignored physical threats to our person as the paper napkin, the flexible straw, the facial tissue, the plastic button and the styrofoam cup. With the memories of kamikaze terrorists still agonizingly fresh, the list of diverting trivialities is fairly limitless.

We can all take comfort that the same republic that produced the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit hasn't lost its way. It remains the land of the freaky and the home of the brazen. Compared with something involving a plastic cap, the coffee suit would appear positively meritorious and urgent.

Predictably enough, the evening was to find not a single injury that resulted directly from the handling of a beverage container. Our water would remain safely topless; the entertainment, nearly so.

And as I sat watching the erotic ministrations of a megamarketed 19- year-old pop diva, it felt strangely reassuring to live in a nation where sticks and stones can still break your bones - but water bottles sold at a Staples Center event will never again hurt you.