Thursday, October 14, 2010

traveling

1. In Newark airport. A clean-shaven man in a button-down shirt (who looks vaguely like the guy in Lonestar) is sitting near one of those "power outlet hubs" (which always strike me as sorta 2003-ish). He is reading a book (appears to be The Things They Carried... which is really too fitting), but he continually looks up at his charging Blackberry. Finally, he stands, takes the charger out of the outlet, and walks over to a woman (probably in her late 20s) who has clearly not been reading the magazine lying on her lap. "Thanks so much," he says, handing her the charger. She flashes a quick smile (she seems like one of those girls who sat with the chatty gossips at lunch in high school, visibly anxious about making sure she was laughing at the right jokes and making fun of the right people). "No problem," she says, standing (!!!) to shake his hand, "I'm Brianna, by the way." "Oh, uh, I'm Jake," he says. He shakes her hand, then immediately pivots and makes a beeline to the food court. Brianna sits back down, expressionless, and puts the magazine into her bag.

2. On flight to San Francisco. The flight attendant is this overly jolly, theatrical guy with a shaved head and an Anna Paquin gap between his front teeth. He makes grand pronouncements like "Coming through the aisle with a cart! Watch your arms! Coming through the aisle... with a cart!" and "Tell me exactly what you want! Whatever you want. If you want five Sprites, that's fine! Just tell me! I've got nothing else to do for the next five hours..." When he comes to my aisle for our drink orders, I ask for a Diet Coke. The woman next to me asks for coffee with milk and sugar. The man by the window asks for tea with hot water and then a separate glass of cold water. The flight attendant makes this clown-ish face, pats my back and exclaims, "Why can't you two be more like this guy?" before letting out a huge howl of laughter (he then mutters a strained "just kidding"). When the mother in the aisle in front of us asks for a small orange juice with a straw for her son, he bellows, "This isn't a restaurant!" And then laughter. And then "just kidding."

3. In the San Francisco airport. Husband and wife are sitting in waiting area at gate. They've just spoken to the husband's mother on the wife's cell phone. Wife is wearing what appears to be four layers of clothing. Husband is on his smartphone throughout this conversation (wasn't able to actually verify this with my eyes, but I'm, like, sure).

Wife: She sounded tired.
Husband: Yeah.
Wife: I feel bad. We were gone a long time.
Husband: Yeah, we were.
Wife: It'll be easier when they're older. I mean, in five years, they'll be... what?... 8 and 6? They'd be in school then. She could just, you know, give them breakfast, send them to school, give them dinner. So... we can take our next trip in, uh, five years.
Husband: Right.

Long pause. Wife gets up and throws out some trash. She returns and sits.

Wife: It was a fun trip, right?
Husband: Yeah.... I think I took over 800 pictures.

1 comment:

nel said...

Really wish I could stop reading through your archives right now. The tears streaming down my face are a dead giveaway.