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Packed Up, Heading Out
By Nancy Lindquist | April 23, 2007
I’m outta here in a little over twenty four hours. Off to the land of fairy costumes, book pitches and George Bush. Oh My!
I’ve been to Houston before. Nice place. Sure, it’s got your abandoned Enron buildings and oil rich types, but it’s also the home of a book I am about to submit to Samhain Publishing. Which means I’m going to be looking at locals and taking notes.
Yes, I do that. I sit places and take notes. Airports are great. People act like there’s no one else there. They pick up their cell phones, have loud conversations and in general demand to be first, best and most interesting.
I hear a lot of people bragging about their vacations, business types talking like no one else is in the room and kids running around like they’re animals. Mostly because the parents are too shell shocked by it all to even notice.
I love airports. They are cesspools of the best and worst of society and a place of great social experimentation. Watching people in an airport not only amuses me, it fascinates me. I think I get off on the smell of jet-fuel.
When I was little, travel was for the elite. I was darn lucky. My dad had a job that allowed me to see much of the world before I was fifteen. My mom would carefully lay out our travel clothes two days before. Mary-Janes with little lace trimmed socks, a smocked dress with a matching coat and gloves for my hands. I was a mini Jackie O and I knew it. I felt like a princess when my family traveled. Maybe that’s why I like it so much now? I still dress up to fly. Tomorrow will mark my first plane flight in jeans, ever. Even in jeans there will be mid heel shoes with a crisp white shirt, done hair and makeup applied with care. You dress up when you travel. I just know there is going to be a mini-quake in Grand Haven when my mother spins in her grave. She would be horrified that I was in jeans on a plane.
Time marches on and more people fly than ever before. Still, there is a teeny part of me that longs to go back to a time when airlines served real food, people dressed and the world was a little more polite. If only we could marry that with a good mix of races and religions. In other words, the best of all worlds.
I guess I long for utopia. Which is funny, cause I’m never gonna find it in an airport.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I dress for comfort when I travel. I fully expect delays, long treks across airport terminals and the hassle of being herded onto and off of planes. So, comfort is my top priority.
I enjoy airports. For some reason, I can write some pretty good stuff while sitting in an uncomforable chair in a terminal with my laptop balanced precariously on my lap. Maybe its the frenetic energy that I feel all around me.