Flying Solo

Don't get too excited about this post. It's pretty long and boring. Bear with me, or just skip it. I'm cleaning out my folder full of scribbled notes before I move on to a much more important Sunday afternoon project: ripping CDs and organizing my music files. A lot of my thoughts end up in the wastebasket, and for better or worse, never see a reader's glazed eyes. For some reason, I deemed this junk postworthy, so take it or leave it.

While I always carry a pen and notepad with me, I use them much more often when I travel. Most people read, work, or talk on the phone as they wait for their flights. I do those things too, but I also take a lot of notes.

I love my solitude. Maybe it's the writer in me. Maybe it's the mom in me. Maybe it's just me. So I love everything about traveling alone. I love early-morning flights. I watch the sunrise as I drive to the airport. Because I'm not a morning person, I seldom get to enjoy a sunrise. I rarely get to see the highway without much traffic. Aside from girls wearing last night's clothes making that drive of shame, the other drivers may be on their way to the airport as well, or already going to work. The women wear fresh makeup, even mascara still wet after being applied at the last stop light. They smell of perfume or spit-up from the baby they just dropped off at daycare. The men all smell like soap and aftershave and mouthwash. When I worked in an office, I always loved that morning elevator scent. Before everyone started smelling like coffee and lunch and perspiration and anticipation or worry or dread.

I like the quiet echo and the semi-creepy feeling I get in a parking garage. As I approach the airport's entrance, I take a deep breath of bus exhaust. I love the smell of diesel fuel in the morning. I really do. It reminds me of Europe. Especially Paris. I like the life that I see in airports. Everyone trying to get where they need or want to be so they can do what they need or want to do. People go somewhere when they can't be replaced by someone else who is already there.

I don't mind all the procedures involved in getting to the gate. I watch all of us go through the motions. One gray bin after another rolling through. The taking off of belts and shoes. The keys clanking in the scratched white plastic bowls. The latex-gloved TSA agent impressed with how many three-ounce bottles of vodka I was able to squeeze into a one-quart Ziploc bag.

My only real problem when I travel is overpacking and still having nothing to wear. That's why I once found myself sitting in the Newark airport in sweltering heat wearing a hot pink bra under a tight white T-shirt. That's why I once wore heels with shorts because otherwise my colors wouldn’t match. I must say, I looked pretty hot in both outfits, but that's beside the point.

If I had been smarter, I may have become a social anthropologist or an anthropological socialist or whatever those people who study human interaction are called. I don't study it, but I can write about it if I want to. Unless you're in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, or in San Francisco at a gay pride parade, there's no better place than an airport for people-watching.

I absolutely love exchanging banter and laughing with total strangers or overhearing everything from mundane conversation to good-natured bickering to full-up verbal brawls. I smile at them in recognition, because they always know when someone is listening. And I think we all identify with each other. (Except for the occasional weirdo.) I drink in the shared experience-of-life stuff, those moments of time when you connect with fellow human beings you've never met and will never see again. Even if you did see them again, you wouldn't know it because you never even got a chance to register their faces.

The Jamaican-sounding woman at the deli who sold me a sandwich wore a nametag that said "Comfort." One might think that would be a good stripper or hooker name, but to me it sounded like childhood and home. It made me smile.

I was in an airport a few months ago in line at a Chili's takeout counter. I stood behind this little blonde (not that I'm stereotyping, I'm just saying) spinner of a sorority girl as she ordered a Diet Coke. The brunette clerk handed her the cup and apologized that they were out of regular lids and explained that she used a coffee cup lid instead. (It was the kind like Starbucks uses with a little sippy hole.) So the blonde, all confused and irritated, goes, "So, like, how am I supposed to put a straw in there?" I shared an eye-rolling look with the clerk over the girl's shoulder as if to agree, What an idiot. So the clerk got a straw and, with the flair of an infomercial spokesmodel, demonstrated. She looked at the girl with eyes that said, "Watch carefully." She slowly and methodically pulled the paper wrapper off the straw and then rather brutally shoved the end of it into the hole. She then held out her hands like Vanna White after someone buys a vowel and showed her best "Voila!" face. By this time, I realized the women in line behind me had been watching this display and were as pleased with it as I was. After blissfully ignorant Blondie floated away, I told the clerk, "Yeah. I was smarter too before I went blonde."

From my seat at the gate, I just watch and imagine. I don't stare. Unless it's someone really hot, or really heavy on the body décor, or both (which would be rare).

I see:

A brooding teenage girl in her logoed shirt frantically texting her boyfriend, worried he'll cheat on her while she's gone. (He will.) A gay couple discreetly touching hands as they walk side-by-side, wishing people understood them. (But knowing most won't.) A frazzled mom with an overflowing diaper bag, a baby in an umbrella stroller, trailed by two busy, excited children wheeling their Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob suitcases. She wonders why she didn't listen to her parents, why she didn’t get her tubes tied, and when he'll find her. (Too soon.) A businessman with his BlackBerry, looking like he's doing something important, but is really just waiting for a message from his mistress. ("Room 725" is all it says.)

I hear so many different languages and try to identify them. Is that Dutch? Do I hear Greek? Can that be Farsi? What if it is? I try to understand the French I hear and have little luck. They were saying something about history or art or philosophy, I'm sure. The French are big on chatting about cultural crap. I sat with three German guys on a flight one time. I couldn't understand anything they said until I heard "Chewbacca" and "Han Solo" and "Skywalker." I smiled at the one next to me and said, "Finally, I understood what y'all were talking about." The quite masculine (I'm just saying) black (just to give you a realistic picture) male (because if I didn't say "male" you'd assume a masculine female) flight attendant spoke to the German guys and said that he went to Germany one time. He said, "I stayed in that hotel . . . Oh, I can't remember what it's called . . . it was that one that Michael Jackson shook his baby off of. Which hotel was that?" The Germans and I shared a good laugh at the whole Michael Jackson baby-shaking thing.

I could never be a flight attendant. I get too claustrophobic for one thing. But what must really suck for them is all the repeating. I'm sure it's automatic and they don't even have to think about it. "Something to drink? Something to drink? Drink? Excuse the cart, Watch your elbows, Tray tables and seatbacks, Tray tables and seatbacks, Upright and locked position, Upright and locked position, B'bye, B'bye, B'bye." If I weren't already, I would go insane in a job like that. Especially now when people will have to buy their little plastic cup of Coke that is mostly ice, or pay for their little sack of nuts. I might have to make change, and that is just not gonna happen with me. I'd be repeating, "Exact change please, Exact change please."

One time I got a same-day reservation, so I was stuck in a middle seat. I hate middle seats. Especially when the person in the window seat lops over into the space I paid for, and the aisle person won't give up their seat to let the loppage go into the aisle. Not that aisle loppage would be allowed anyway, for safety reasons. I have nothing against overweight people, but when they are so big that a fire department crane had to pull them from the bed they have been living in for the last 12 years just so they can get into a seat on a plane next to me, forgive me for feeling a little imposed upon. This woman somehow, without any lubrication, managed to work herself into that seat, then proceeded to raise the armrest I was using (and had intentionally, in advance, made sure I had first dibs on) to make extra room for her entire left butt cheek. No apology, no "Excuse me for being a fat-ass and taking your armrest without asking." Nothing. If she had been polite, I may have cut her some slack, but I still wouldn't have been happy about it. Hey maybe I don't love everything about traveling.

I find my baggage carousel by recognizing flightmates. Some look different standing up. Most seem relaxed and glad to have arrived. Cell phones on every ear. Strangers helping grab suitcases for those who couldn't reach theirs. So many black bags, most with a different colored identifying tag or ribbon. I see my overstuffed suitcase and feel reunited with my only travel companion. Well, that and my notepad.

I don't particularly like take-offs, but I tolerate them because they mean I'm probably going to have a happy landing somewhere. And see a lot of life in between.