Here’s what I want to know: when you step on the moving walkway at the airport, why does it immediately start intoning, “The moving walkway is about to end . . . please watch your step”? That’s like having a voice out of nowhere advise, before you take your first bite of a candy bar, “You’re about to finish the candy bar. Please chew thoroughly.” Why is there a moving walkway there anyway? It’s only forty feet long. If I am going to invest in a moving walkway, I want it to be worth my while. I want to step on that walkway at Baltimore-Washington International and step off in Auckland, New Zealand.
Last night, I went to the airport to pick up my friend Tiffany, who was on an overnight stopover from Seattle to Paris. The last leg of her flight was from Phoenix. As I waited in the terminal, a man with darting, bulging eyes, wild grey hair, and hideous blue sneakers announced for all to hear that his girlfriend was coming from Phoenix, and he couldn’t remember if she was on Southwest or America West. Tiffany was on America West, but I didn’t volunteer this information because he didn’t ask me directly and because I felt that any assistance would be indirectly rewarding his choice of footwear. As he was incapable of deciphering the “Arrivials” display, he assaulted every traveler exiting the security checkpoint with the frantic question, “Did your flight come through Phoenix?”
Those who didn’t jump away from him in terror answered him with a startled negative. This was not surprising considering—as the "Arrivals" board clearly indicated—that the plane from Phoenix was not due to arrive for ten minutes. I observed in fascination as he worked himself into a mouth-foaming frenzy over the next half hour and tried to imagine the woman he was meeting. Was she some sort of goddess, from whom every moment away was sheer torture? Was she a dominatrix who would torture him if he missed her? Had he ever even met her before? Maybe she was his Internet girlfriend, who had conveniently forgotten to mention that she was a forty-nine-year-old man named Hank.
She turned out to be a perfectly innocuous hippie girl a third his age, who was apparently blessed with the supernatural gift of finding something worthwhile in that fretful mess.
You know, it’s really one of my goals to be kinder and less judgmental, but it would make my life a lot easier if people met me halfway and stopped being so ridiculous.
Keep Informed:
If you’re middle class, your tax burden has gone up since Bush was not-elected. Big surprise.
Who is more decisive in an emergency: Bush or Kerry?
Interesting election statistics from the “Harper’s Index.”
Who says all Republicans are bad?
