Kudos to You, Sir
I have spent the greater part of this week in Miami for work. By the way, all of you thinking "must be nice" right now clearly haven't travelled for work because OMG IT IS SO NOT AS FUN AS IT SOUNDS.
Not even a little bit.
I'll put it this way -- I will have logged well over 60 hours worked and less than 15 hours of sleep in four days, all while the hooligans in my house have continued to trash the place and create even more work for me to do when I get home. That's just the tip of the GAH! iceberg.
Anyway.
I had a really great view of a parking lot all this week, and an even better view of humanity while spending too much time in various airports. That's where the best and worst in humanity comes out, you know. But, I'm grumpy this week, so I only noticed the worst.
Like the woman behind me in line at security earlier today.
If her words are to be trusted, she got in line at security less than 20 minutes before her flight was scheduled to depart. I'm no math genius, but that sounds like a VERY BAD PROBLEM to me. That means her flight was already boarding before she ever set foot in the airport and that's really no way to travel, unless you enjoy stress and missing your flight.
Which she clearly didn't.
The woman, a retiree who was living in Miami and on her way north to visit her son, was freaking the heck out. Her husband was hiding his face the entire time and pretending not to know her because she was telling absolutely everyone who would listen, "Our flight leaves in 20 minutes. Can we go in front of you?"
Proving that there is kindness in this world (and people who will extend kindness when it's not necessarily deserved), a lot of people let her move ahead of them. That's how she wound up behind me.
Me.
The person who had headphones on and was doing her darndest to avoid making eye contact with any humans, most especially any humans who had very obviously undergone plastic surgery and were looking to tell their life story so they could turn their lack of planning into someone else's emergency.
Me.
After hearing her life story (again because her voice carried over Adam Levine's as he sang in my ear), I let her go. I really, really, really, really, REALLY didn't want to because GET TO THE AIRPORT ON TIME LIKE I DID, PLEASE.
(I told you I was grumpy. It happens.)
(The grumpy is absolutely related to the fact that TSA smashed my box of cupcakes that I was very carefully guarding. Delicious, fantastical cupcakes that now look like a box of smashed icing.)
(This is just another sentence in parenthesis because I'm going for the world record with this post.)
ANYWAY.
I let her go.
And I didn't even laugh a little when it turned out that she had broken all sorts of rules when packing her carry on. She was pulled aside for extra screening and had to completely empty her bag, all the while the people who had let her pass went on to the rest of the airport well before she did.
But her husband did laugh. And I kind of loved him for it.
"I told you we needed to leave for the airport earlier," I heard him say.
They missed their flight. I know that because I had a chance to tell the man that he was sort of my hero when they ended up rescheduled on my flight. He was sitting right next to me on the plane, pretending not to notice the "I hate you for being right" daggers his wife's eyes were shooting at him.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Reader Comments (4)
There is this little new thing trying to gain momentum. I thought of your daughter when I saw it.
Consider posting about loving your library?
http://librarieschangedmylife.tumblr.com/
Oh boy! Been there. I used to be a 'road warrior'. And you are so right, it's not even close to fun. I still travel but not nearly as much. Back when I traveled week after week I learned to ignore just about everything that went on around me. I've slacked on that since I do not travel as much and it's just frustrating, comical, annoying, hysterical and lame all at the same time! :)
Bwhahahaha! Hopefully she learned. Hopefully...
i've been way late to the airport many, many times, but i refuse to ask folks if i can cut in front of them. MY fault for being a dumbass. love that she had to deal with her consequences. bummer her husband had to as well!