Airport Airhead

Recently I was cutting up with some friends and I was reminded of this delightful little moment in time in my life. There are moments in your lifetime that are etched into your memory because of their profundity or their sheer wonderfulness. This was NOT one of those moments. No, this moment will forever remain in my memory because of its idiocy. For once, however, I was not the one being the idiot. That honor would have to go to the other player in my moment, the random stranger at the Washington, DC airport who foisted her dumbness upon me for that one brief shining moment in time.

It went down like this. I was returning from spending a couple of really not good days with my family in New York City. The weather had been hot and muggy, the teenagers had been cranky and surly and my mother had been challenging. I have since discovered that my mother's personality and mine do not mix well while traveling. I tend to be a fly by the seat of your pants traveller and she is, well, not. During this particular trip, though, I hadn't come to that realization, yet. That little nugget of wisdom was still forming in the recesses of my brain.

Anyway, as I have mentioned before, I work for an airline, so my family and I always travel stand by. If there are seats available on the aircraft, we go on our merry way, winging merrily to distant climes and exotic locales, like Jacksonville. If there are no seats available on the aircraft, we sit at the airport, waiting...bored...frustrated...irritated. I don't know exactly what we're irritated about. We fly for free, dammit, you'd think we'd be thankful, but I guess we just have gotten spoiled over the years. This particular trip, after having been irritated for the better part of 48 hours in New York, we were stuck, irritated, on our homeward bound journey in the DC airport.

We sat and waited for several hours. Planes came in, planes took off, we remained grounded. I checked flights and tried not to become hysterical, but when it became apparent to me that we might be trapped in DC until the end of time, I decided that drastic measures were in order. I left my children and my mother in the gate area and went back through security to the ticket sales counter for my airline. I was given information on upcoming flights and some possible remedies to get unstuck from DC. I then proceeded back through the security area to get back to my family in the gate area.

Now, as nearly every travelling person has experienced, the security area at any airport presents its own challenges, challenges that range from being merely inconvenient to profoundly stupid. Seasoned travellers know to remove their shoes and to place all toiletries in a quart sized ziploc bag, and to place their cellphone and change in the little dish, and to watch and wait for their turn to step quickly through the scanner, retrieve their belongings and get out of the way of those following them. Seasoned travellers do all of these things automatically, without even thinking about them. Seasoned travellers limit conversation and pay attention. Inexperienced travellers, or, maybe they're just naturally annoying people, just don't seem to get the general flow of things in the airport security area. They chat to each other or on their cellphones, fail to pay attention and move forward when it's their turn, fail to take their shoes off, fail to get the hell out of the way when others are behind them and passing through the scanner...well, you get my meaning.

So, on my way back through security, I had removed my shoes and placed them and my cellphone in the plastic tub and stepped through the body scanner. I was waiting on the other side of the scanner for the plastic tub with my belongings to appear when I heard a female voice over my left shoulder say, "So...are we going to get to see pictures of the baby on the monitor?" Now, I have mentioned before how much I despise random people trying to make chit chat with me, so I attempted to ignore the voice, but when no one else responded to her, I, with a feeling of deep foreboding, a feeling that told me that this situation could not possibly end well, turned my head to the left, indicated with my right hand toward my chest and queried, "Are you speaking to me?" A lady, a complete and utter stranger to me, bobbed her head in the affirmative and queried again, "I said, are we going to get to see photos of the baby on the monitor?" and indicated toward my abdomen that she thought I was pregnant.

Now, before I go any further, perhaps I should discuss what I was wearing that day and maybe why this woman had the unmitigated gall to address me in such a manner. I was wearing travelling clothes. When one flies standby often, one develops a sort of uniform for travelling, something that looks nice enough to be worn in first class should one be fortunate enough to be upgraded to first, but something that is relaxed and comfy enough to spend hour upon blessed, stinking hour in the waiting area of an airport. That particular day, I was wearing an oversized, longish blue sweater that I had purchased in NYC from a trendy, upscale, overpriced retailer, a pair of basic black travelling slacks and my comfy black walking shoes and socks.

Furthermore, I was well into my forties at this point and had not been pregnant for a number of years, my youngest was 14 at the time. I will admit that I'm overweight and was so at the time of this event, as well. In fact, I've admitted this on any number of occasions and take a certain amount of delight in calling myself "fat", becauses "fat" is a funny word. "Obese", "heavy set," or "big boned", on the other hand, aren't funny at all, and "fluffy" is just dumb. So, I suppose that the bulky sweater and extra weight could possibly have made it appear that I was with child...maybe. But, I learned a long, long time ago that unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a woman is indeed pregnant, you do not so much as breathe a word of inquiry in that regard towards her. You go behind her back and ask her friends.

Now, maybe, just maybe, this was God's way of telling me that I needed to get my health under control and make weight loss a priority. Perhaps, He sent this "angel", and I use the term ever so loosely, to shock me into the nearest WeightWatcher's meeting like He used the big fish to shock Jonah to hightail it, covered in fish spit, to Ninevah. Or, on the other hand, maybe this was God's way of showing this dumb lady that nosiness is NOT next to Godliness, and that she needed to learn to keep her opinions and her observations a little bit closer to the vest. Either way, all I know is that perhaps the Devil stepped in at that moment, compelled me to turn around and confirm that the question was indeed directed at me, and then look the woman dead in the eye and in the most deadpan, straight faced, don't-screw-with-me-sister voice I could manage answer her by saying, "No, ma'am. I'm not pregnant. I'm just FAT."

Queen DumDum of the Dumblefusses looked shellshocked for a fraction of a second, but instead of having the good grace to maybe mumble "sorry" and turn away, she decided to try to cover herself by blathering on and on about how neat it would be if the airport scanners could actually "see" a baby in utero and display it on the screen for everyone to enjoy...like pregnancy is some sort of freaky sideshow that random, travelling strangers need to have the opportunity to participate in and discuss again at their leisure. I quickly retrieved my belongings from the scanner's conveyor belt and turned on my heel and stormed away, whipping out my cellphone along the way so that I could call my husband and scream at him about stupid, nosy noodleheads, while I walked down the concourse and back into the gate area.

I arrived back at the gate area and relayed my experience to my mother and children. My mother stared at me, horrified, and exclaimed, "Sherri Lynn!! I can't believe you said that!" My comment to her was:

"Well, Mom, a really stupid question deserves a really smartass response."

"All Standbys for Raleigh Approach the Gate"

I am extremely fortunate to work for an airline. I love my job. I love my friends at my job. I love the office building in which I spend the majority of my life. And, toiling in the airline industry does have its definite advantages. As in many specialized industries, there are all sorts of discounts and special deals that airline employees are privy to. The thing is, though, most of the traveling public is under the somewhat mistaken impression that we airline folks get free, unlimited air travel, wherever, whenever. While it is true that we are lucky to get very reduced cost or in some cases, technically free, travel (depending on length of employment), it is by no means any less true that there is a price to pay...there is always a price.

You see, the price that airline folks pay for air travel is called traveling by stand-by or non-rev(enue) travel. In general, this means that we show up at the airport, bags and kids and husbands, or wives as the case may be, in tow, and in many cases armed with vodka and/or mild barbituates, at the absolute butt crack of dawn for the very first flight of the day when we want to visit Grandma in Tulsa or Aunt Sally and Uncle Buford in Poughkeepsie.

We then wait, which could be a little while or could be all damned day, until a sometimes pleasant, but very oftentimes rude, surly, snide, power crazy, gate agent deigns to call our names and hand us the magic boarding passes to paradise...or, more accurately, to the coach section of the aircraft, which is probably going to be hotter than the ninth level of Tartarus and is where we invariably will be seated next to either a screaming, ill behaved heathen brat who is torn between repeatedly and rhytmically kicking the seat in front of him or yelling full voice for mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, or next to an extremely large, mouth breathing, florid faced man, who is radiant in his fried chicken/mashed potatoes and gravy aroma and resplendent in the sweat stains down the sides of his shirt and chicken grease on his face and fingers and whose massive quantity of flesh insists on encroaching into our space.

Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of exercising my privilege to non rev ecstasy on my company's last flight to Raleigh. Wow. Even as I'm reading that it seems somehow movie-like. "Last Flight to Raleigh"...starring Liv Tyler and Johnny Depp. Anyhoo, I digress.

I like to watch people. Airports are perfect places in which to observe the human condition. Since I have the opportunity to travel by air more often than the average person, I have lots of time in which to people watch. On this particular excursion to Raleigh, I was seated at the gate in one of the marginally comfortable chairs, next to my beautiful, almost 16-year-old daughter while we awaited the announcement that our flight was actually going to depart, and that our happy butts would be planted in the empty, leftover seats in coach next to the rude child or the fat man. If you have never spent two hours of wait time with a bored 16-year-old whose iPod's battery is failing, it is what you could call a character building exercise.

While we were waiting, my mind began to wander and I noticed the older lady seated directly across the aisle from us. I noticed her because she was speaking, quite loudly, to someone on her cell phone. I noticed her because she kept saying she was at the Dallas airport and I felt compelled to continue eavesdropping to ensure that I was hearing her correctly. As a subject for a people watching aficianado, she was a true treasure.

She was 60-ish and dressed in a dashiki type top, colorful baggy bottoms, adorned with lime green, vinyl crocs on her feet, and graced with a lovely, shiny nose ring, which glittered in the florescent lighting like the proverbial jewel of the Nile. I continued to eavesdrop on this poor unfortunate's cell phone conversation because I felt that she was confused about her exact location on my home planet. You see, I know that when my butt touched down in the seat across the aisle from her that it was convinced that we were currently occupying space at the big Houston airport, and I was kept busy musing in an attempt to decide whether my daughter and I may have somehow inadvertently disrupted the space time continuum and had landed, big hair and large bottoms first, in Dallas. Thankfully, Ms. Aging Hipster finally realized her error and told her cell phone that she was, in fact, at the Houston airport, which finally put my mind at ease. I am quite certain that Hipster's cell phone was relieved at this news, too.

At that, it was time to board the aircraft, two hours late to Raleigh. I took my seat next to the fat man, took a 10 dollar bill out of my purse and at the first opportunity flagged down the harried flight attendant to request two of those delightful little bottles of wine. The cost of the two tiny bottles of wine would exactly equal the amount of money changing hands, thus elimating the need for the flight attendant to make change. And, I figured, two bottles of wine would just about smoothe out the rough edges enough for me to endure the the ninth level of Tarturus for the two and a half hour duration of the flight.

I then gave the fat man a wink, smiled my best East Texas, big haired, cheerleader smile, and said knowingly, "Hold on to your drumsticks, honey. It's gonna be a bumpy ride."