Indulge me ... Traveling sure can be interesting. Airports, airplanes, rental cars, and the people who work, interact, and seemingly live within them can make it all so difficult. I know it must be a real pain to get up everyday and head to the airport for work -- there are always people there wanting you to help them, or show them to their gate, or ask you questions like, "is this where I drop off my car?" Believe me, I can understand, but at the end of the day they picked the career path.
Flying in from Austin to DC earlier today the steward (I am guessing that is the male term for the guy who hands out the drinks and scowls at me for asking questions) made my life tons of fun as I was sitting there. Every other person (correct that, passengers) who walks down the aisle works very hard to avoid slamming into people's arms as they sit in the size challenged seats. I even paid for the upgrade to get an "extra 5 inches of legroom." Every time he walked by he slammed into me harder and harder as to tell me I was in his way and to make me realize how lucky I was to be in his airplane.
At the Dulles International Airport as I waited to catch a rubber band powered glider back to State College I got to watch a show that would never make it on cable TV -- the language and drama would make Tony Soprano scratch his head -- or whack someone. Let me share a couple of examples of the love that is present this time of year in the airports ...
Scenario one ... Two guys showed up at the bar at the same time at the only open stool ... they stared each other down like Rocky does the Russian dude in the one sequel ... after about (and I am not kidding) 10 minutes of stare down, the one guy just yelled out, "fuck this, you are a real asshole!" He then just stormed away. Hmm, not all that together for an airport. How'd he get through security? I honestly thought there was going to be an all out fight break out between these two guys. The one who stayed just laughed and stared at him while the stool loser walked away. BTW, the winner didn't even sit down.
The other was this woman who told her husband that she didn't want to sit with him and top piss off so he stormed off ... she then proceeded to cozy up to some guy at the bar and tell him to order her a drink -- did I miss something here? She then yelled at the bartender for not paying attention to her and got pissed at the guy next to her as he sat down -- I guess because he was too close ... who knows. I went back to listening to my audiobook only to look up and notice this same lady was now crying and showing the stranger next to her pictures of her when she was young. I hate to say it, but I tried to listen, but I couldn't make out the crazy talk through the tears.
This is what travel does to people.
All that happened in about a 20 minute span as I grabbed a quick beer trying to kill time between flights. I know Steve Martin and John Candy already made the best travel movie ever, but just hanging out at the airport could create a TV series that would rival anything Seinfeld ever pulled off. Sorry for the rant, but a full day of traveling and watching the drama around me was just too much to keep to myself.
THAT'S NOT A PILLOW!
Sorry. That line just pops into my head every time I think of that movie...
Travelers are generally crazy, unruly, rude, arrogant, obnoxious. And I'm pretty sure there's a group of people who suffer a drop in IQ of about 30 points as soon as they step into public. Double that for travel through an airport.
Hope you made it home safe. At least the crazies make the trip interesting. Would you really rather have to blog that you had an uneventful, boring flight with nothing to distract you the whole way home? ;-)
Posted by: D'Arcy Norman | 12/02/2006 at 07:00 PM