When you spend three hours in an airport by yourself, you find yourself paying attention to all kinds of things.  As an introvert, I’m not likely to engage in a conversation with anyone, at least not on purpose, and so it frees my mind to think about things I may not have thought of before and to observe some interesting things.

Like for instance, why does the moving walkway have an English accent?  Will we not pay attention to her warning that the walkway is about to end without it?  And why female?  Would a male voice startle people as they reached the the end and cause more harm than good?  And have you ever watched people on the walkway?  I watched a young man ride on the rail today, dangling his feet above the walkway.  If he’s not actually ON the walkway does the warning pertain to him?  Little kids love to ride it like a carnival ride with parents either walking behind them or next to them.

Then there was the older lady with the walker in the bar and grill who wanted to make sure her servers got everything just right because she kept chasing them down from her table, at one point taking her plate up to the bar for them to fix something.  She didn’t need the walker for that.  At the same bar, a woman who had a bit too much to drink increased her volume and use of profanity, at one point bragging to someone that she used this kind of language in front of her daughter because she wasn’t going to raise some weak crybaby woman.  Apparently strong women must have strong language.  And strong drink to go with it.

I watched a mom with two young girls attempt to get breakfast for them at a Dunkin’ Donuts.  One child was in a stroller and one was in a carrier on mom.  Mom was trying to get through the line as quickly as should could, juggling children, her bag and the food, handing the girl in the stroller a banana so she wouldn’t have to carry one more thing.  Still juggling, this same little girl had stripped the banana of its peel and was forcefully trying to hand it to mom to throw away and mom was still trying to pay for everything.  Some young whippersnapper behind me was making fun of her and it was all I could do not to smack his lack of experienced face.

Speaking of smacking, there’s nothing more frustrating for me than watching a parent who allows a child to hit them as they’re screaming no in their face.  The child was maybe three years old and mom just walked away from the child and ignored the behavior.  When dad showed up, the little girl ran to him for hugs which he provided and nothing was done about the behavior.  She’s only three.  What are they going to do when she’s 13?

Sitting in the restaurant I kept looking at this guy sitting my himself.  Have you ever looked at someone and thought they looked so much like someone in your family you wanted to go over and ask them questions?  I probably spent a half hour contemplating it, knowing full well again that I wouldn’t really do it but he could have been my brother’s older brother.  It was kind of scary.

The flight to my latest destination was especially nice because I didn’t have to sit with anyone there, however that changed drastically on the way home.  I don’t know if there was some kind of football coach’s convention or something, but every man on the flight was huge, including the gentleman sitting beside me.  I’m not talking overweight, they were just big men. Bless his heart, he barely fit in the seat and his shoulders were in my space and yet he tried to squeeze into the seat so the he wasn’t squashing me.  One of the gentlemen, as we were getting ready to deplane literally sat in his seat, reached up with with his hand and pulled his case out of the upper storage.  I’m talking huge.

Sometimes at the the airport, love blooms.  Remember the drunk woman at the bar?  The young man sitting near her and another young woman began a conversation that was still going on when I left.  They didn’t know each other before as they made introductions with the usual my name is and where are you from.  About an hour later as I was sitting waiting for my plan at the gate, I saw them on the moving walkway, just talking up a storm.  I hope they weren’t too engaged to miss the warning from the lady with the English accent.