The airport was entirely deserted at 4 am when Justin dropped me off (did I mention he’s the best ever?) and it was the first time I’d been without my Model UN people. Normally we do dumb stuff together until we board the plane, like playing Cards Against Humanity for hours to distract us from our boredom, or drinking mimosas with just enough orange juice to add “a touch of color,” but alas I just had myself and my notebook and my books. So situated, I contented myself with reading the fifth Game of Thrones book (until I got to Davos and stopped, his chapters just drag…) and writing.
And people watching. I love people watching.
It took me two seconds to get through airport security (like always- just bat an eyelash and flash a smile and my typical, innocent American self is through in a heartbeat), boarded the plane to Dallas at 6:00 am, and slept the entire way through.
But for real, though, who decided that airplanes and airports were supposed to be Antarctica?! I know I’ve been telling people I want to travel to all traversible continents before I graduate but really, Antarctica, this is no way to get revenge.
It’s COLD. Winter is clearly coming and I left my furs at home.
So I bought a pair of grey fuzzy socks instead. When I get home I’m going to glue google eyes on them and give them ears so they’ll be a nice pair of elephants.
I always watch the breaking through of the clouds, though. I always save that part and obnoxiously lean across my seatmate if I don’t have a window seat. Except that person’s usually a Model UN person and they don’t care. This time it was a random Asian. Who probably cared. I didn’t, though. I’ll only be able to see the world separate itself from reality with clouds so many times in my life, and I’m determined not to miss it, not even once.
Sometimes I pretend I’m jumping out of the windows and bouncing on the gold lining of the puff castles (my favorite is when they’re colored like so many roses), and I like when the sun’s just coming up, and the stars are smattered across the pastels of the dawn, because then I jump from my golden cloud bouquet and swing on a star-hammock until I forget the existence of the world I’m swinging over in all its steel, machinated glory.
Once I touch back to reality, though, I love the airport itself. You just know that everyone here is here for a purpose. For a lot of people it’s a defining moment in their lives. People don’t just happen to be in an airport, destined for somewhere else. It reminds me of this post I wrote last October. Sometimes I spend my time making up everyone’s stories. I’d rather just hear them, but that might be more socially unacceptable than leaning over the Asian on the plane to see the cloud-break of the world. And probably a lot harder to explain.
“Excuse me, sir, I can haz your story so that I can add you to my overarching story of humanity?”
Then they’re like this:
And I’m just like:
So sometimes it’s better to just pretend.
Traveler at the Edge 