People are strange
Nothing accentuates the idiosyncrasies of people better than traveling. I am convinced of this today as I travel from Providence to The Twin Cities for a very good friends wedding.
First, traveling sucks these days and I am not sure if I should send my open letter of disgust to terrorists globally or the US government bureau that runs the TSA. When I was a kid I used to love traveling by plane it was easily one of my five favorite things to do right up there with Wet & Wild Water World, a local water park, skipping school, which I never did but liked the concept of more than anything else and turning all my lights off laying on the floor of my bedroom and listening to Nirvana while I called and talked to some girl that I was convinced I was destined to marry (don’t ask, I was like 15). The point is, as I lose the plot almost entirely, that I loved to travel and was generally bitterly disappointed when I found out that my family was driving anywhere.
But today... I think that if somebody could have made a compelling case for it I would have left the dentist office and sat in a dentist chair for three hours while they performed a root canal with little more anesthetic than a sturdy piece of oak branch and a greasy rag.
Here are a couple of reasons why: First, the TSA is a joke; Second, airlines have become less friendly than I thought was possible, and the attitude that I constantly got from them gave the impressions that they were doing me a favor by taking my hard earned and carting me around the country; Third, people on airplanes that fly are by-and-large the most despicable variety of their particular flavor of people around.
The TSA is a joke deserves a bit of a qualifier. I would speculate that flying around is safer than it was prior to the Sept. 12 Government Expansion Projects, but I don’t think that it says much. The guy that scanned my bags through the big x-ray scanning machine that sits near the check-in might—and this is a very big might—have looked at four bags. He certainly noticed the ass of the woman that was loading all of the big bags onto the conveyor belt but I would surmise that he spent very little time of his workday looking at the silver outlines of underwear, shirt, razors and vibrators. (Which makes me wonder, how often does a woman put her vibrator through the checked baggage, and is it possible for me to meet her. That takes a tremendous amount of courage and I honestly get terrified that the scanner—who doesn’t scan anything apparently—is going to form some opinion about the fact that half of my packed underwear have stripes.) The security check through guy did take at least a second glance at my drivers license when I walked through, it is 4 years old and the guy in the photo and the guy typing this up don’t look to much alike anymore and that is a good thing. But they have this new, well, new to me, policy of making sure that all of your lotions, creams and what not are packaged together in a clear zip lock baggie in your carry-on luggage. Saline solution doesn’t count though, because it is medical. Which baffles me because getting the top of a bottle of saline solution isn’t difficult and I will routinely refill my small saline bottle so that I am not lugging around my gigantic economy size bottle. So why couldn’t I put anything else in there; just and idle question?
The airlines, oh gods where do I start? I generally fly the minor carriers Southwest (if Southwest still qualifies as a minor carrier), and Jet Blue (I have been known to drive 6 hours so that I can fly Jet Blue) are the two big ones that come to mind. But today I am flying United and American and I think it might be the last time for both. United has started this thing called Economy Plus for which they charge a little extra and it includes the seats from the bulk head through the emergency row—about half the aircraft. When I went to check in at the counter I asked for a window seat and the guy started typing away then informed me that the only window seat available was going to be extra. They must have a policy in place that says don’t charge anybody who uses words of frustration but doesn’t swear or get angry, because I think I said that it was an idiotic policy to sell me a seat and not charge me for it at the point of purchase, and voila, I am sitting in an emergency aisle; but not without a great deal of attitude. I didn’t even get a, “Have a nice flight/day/morning/life/anything.” The woman at American was nice enough when I checked in to my gate at O’Hare airport but when I asked her if there was by chance a place to get a haircut in the airport—a strange request I thought but in Chicago it seemed possible; and I wasn’t disappointed, the barber/salon/whatever was in a whole other terminal of the airport—she gave me my answer then proceeded to lecture me on the value of pedestrian exercise, at which point I told her I don’t own a car, walk everywhere I ever have to go and I would indulge my desire to sit on my butt for the forty minutes that it would take them to start boarding. She just shrugged and looked me up and down—I am overweight, I admit it, but she didn’t have to acknowledge it.
My least favorite part of flying though is the people around whom I end up spending time. Maybe it is my dumb luck, but as I get older I meet a lot less of the kinds of people that I met when I was 12 and a child flying. But I suppose if I sat down and really thought about it that would hold true everywhere in my life, not just the airport. So when I get on the plane in Providence I end up sitting in a row with the three biggest guys on the plane. And two of them stake out their claim on the arm rests right away, so I ended up sitting for two hours with my arms crossed, shoulders cramped and otherwise great temperament sinking like the faster Dubya’s approval rating. At one point during the flight though the guy on my left made a fatal mistake and leaned forward so I gallantly claimed a portion of the armrest and tried to un-cramp my shoulders slightly.
You know which gets me thinking: when I am in an airplane I am maybe overly considerate. For example when I sit down I take special care to see you is behind me so that if I wanted to, say, put my seat back a little bit I am not going to break a kneecap doing it. The woman who sat in front of didn’t share with me in that habit of courtesy and when she threw her chair back it popped my kneecaps out of place and I haven’t been walking right all day.
The other funny thing about the airports is that time doesn’t exist beyond the walkthrough metal detector at the entrance to the terminals.
I flew out at 7:00 a.m. and I saw a guy sitting at the bar in the airport drinking, what looked like, a pilsner with a cheeseburger. SEVEN IN THE MORNING and homeboy is washing down a cheeseburger with a cold beer. When I got to Chicago at 8:30 local time there were a bunch of people sitting at a Chili’s eating Fajitas and drinking Coronas and Dos Equis. (What is the plural of Dos Equis?) And it honestly freaks me out to see people who have been awake for hours and hours eating what I consider to be lunch at 8:00 a.m. it is just surreal the way that you completely lose sense of things, the terminals are so well lit up and the haze from the pollution diffuses all the light and you just lose time.
But these last two things are the best. First, I stood in the waiting area of the boarding gate and actually said to myself, “Damn, all the seats are full.” But they weren’t they were half full but there were no seats that would give me the opportunity to sit so that I wasn’t next to anybody—so it was like looking at a chessboard where every other square had a body in it—then I went and on the floor of the holding pen. ON THE FLOOR, BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO SIT NEXT TO SOMEONE! I hope that everyone sees how ludicrous that is. I did. Second I sat next to really nice man on my way from Chicago to Minneapolis he told me about his job—he is the real Tom Hanks from Fed Ex: his job is to make sure your packages get where they are supposed to go, not he was stranded on an island for five years—and the particulars about it, he told me about his house on the lake in Minnesota, how he doesn’t like his cell phone because sometimes he gets off a plane and picks up his baggage with just enough time to turn around and get on another plane somewhere, and how he only got his first PC in the last 8 years and he is totally lost without it now that it is broken. But I never once thought of asking his name.
I love flying.
Now that I am landed and settled in my hotel room, I have to say it is all worth it. My friends family are really great, they are close-knit and I kind of grew up with all of them so it is really nice to see them all. Tomorrow is the wedding, I can’t wait.
