I love airports. Despite the tediousness of security lines and the offense of my feet touching the ground where other unknown (and most definitely unwashed) feet have tread. Watching humanity in transit is captivating.
Look beyond the rush of people, the too-drunk business travelers, the harried families, the lost tourists and the large quantities of unwashed feet and you can’t help but wonder about these strangers around you.
What adventures await them? Will they find a new love or have they just said goodbye to an old one? Are their travels bringing them nearer to home or further from their daily stresses?
Even now, as I watch the two grey-bearded men sitting in front of me with their matching handlebar mustaches, utility shorts, and Hawaiian shirts. I imagine they are Super Villains having just successfully completed another dastardly cartoon-like caper. Now, with their villainry complete they are headed to a Sandels Resort where they will lay by the pool all day getting drunk on daiquiris. What can I say even Super Villians need a little Island time.
Most stories don’t need to be imagined. Sometimes the chapter opens with a welcoming smile or a helpful hand. On a plane ride home from Austin I sat next to a well-dressed but weary-eyed traveler, exhausted myself I nodded and gave him a quick half smile acknowledging a shared need for rest and a promise of a quiet flight to our respective homes. Instead, my new seat mate shot back a toothy grin so full of warmth and energy that we spent the next several hours chatting. Once homeless, he was now a motivational speaker for at-risk youth. Having learned the value of tenacity, random acts of kindness and the transformative power of education he has made his life’s work to be “Homeless by Choice“, traveling the country sharing his story encouraging young people by example and proving surviving and thriving is an option.
On a trip to San Francisco I bonded with a stranger over a hank of yarn. A “hank” is basically unwound yarn and for a beginning knitter (that’s me) working from a hank versus a neatly wound ball of yarn is like trying to knit with live snakes. After a few minutes of watching me fail at my snake wrangling this kind stranger held up his hands and walked me through how to loop the yarn around his hands until I had a neatly formed ball of yarn. While I worked the yarn he explained how he used to help his mother do the same thing and as time ticked by I learned about what it was like for him growing up in Mexico, as a gay man and about his fear in coming out to his Catholic mother whom he dearly loved. It was risky, he said, but so was living someone else’s life.
It turns out my Super Villians were actually sweet engineering professors on the way home from vacation. One of whom used to teach at the university I work for now. We shared a few stories about clear night skies and the benefit of star gazing in locations without light pollution. Maybe that’s what it is about airports, despite the transient nature of its inhabitants rushing to and from, we are all at the mercy of time. Momentarily stuck together in a kind of suspended animation, waiting. Bonded against our common enemies of weather and overbooked airlines we are suddenly (and briefly) free to see one another unobstructed. Yes, that’s what I love about airports those brief conversations, sharing of stories, and the opportunity to meet more humans and fewer super villains.
Until next time, happy camping.
Boondock Adventures 