Travel Notes: Homecoming

Sleep

In a brave effort to not inconvenience anyone except for myself (self-martyrdom: what’s the point unless you tell people about it?), I decided to sleepover at New York’s JFK airport and catch my flight westward ho! the following morning. Misery loves company, and I found comfort in other travelers, similarly arranged like castaways, orphans, and post-traumatic victims in every corner of terminal 4. The devil’s playthings, kids if you insist, spent the entire night alternating between shrieking and yelling; a morning investigation of the premises uncovered a regrettably convenient gaming area, ironically designated as the “Fun Zone.”

I drifted in and out of consciousness, quite literally between a rock and a hard place. It was the most uncomfortable night of my life, at least since the time I accidentally dragged my friend to an Evangelist Haunted House (have you ever seen the Holy Spirit?). Still, sleeping on a slab of concrete can be an elucidating experience. For one, cramping pain made me aware of muscle groups I never even knew I had. The following morning I decided to self-medicate with the world’s most expensive banana ($1.07) because I figured that perhaps this most recent extraction will override my other, more corporeal, senses. After all, it’s mind over body…and I’m convinced that the fruit was O-R-G-A-N-I-C (so totally worth it!).

Pins

In line with me was an ordinary 20-something girl with an ordinary black purse that housed an eye-catching pin. In red, bold letters, it brightly read: “I suck cock.”

Needless to say, it launched me into the most thoughtful reverie…What motivates someone to get a pin like that?

Is it a proud declaration of what she likes to do? A sardonic comment on what women are expected to do? An advertisement of what she will do, in place of the popular (but so 1950’s) “Am fertile and ready” tees?

Her boyfriend was with her, and I marked the affectionate placement of his left hand. Maybe the pin was a gift from him? Was he attempting to encourage her to expand her bedroom repertoire? A reward for having done exactly that (like those buttons you get for having finished a Vermonster)? Could it have been intended as a bragging message to other boyfriends (“don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”)?

I couldn’t help myself (no surprise there) and actually ended up tapping the girl on her (ordinary) shoulder and inquiring about the nature of the pin’s obviously cryptic message. Unfortunately, she did not seem to understand the question and merely giggled whimsically in its direction. I would have (for the sake of the truth!) been tempted to ask again, but at that very moment the line advanced, and we were forever separated to different ticketing agents.

There are some things we were never meant to know.

There should be a Twilight Zone episode about this.

Signs

If you find yourself in an airport and a line that says “check-in” you might see a sign at the front of that line instructing you that “check-in” for domestic flights is only 30 minutes prior to the flight. One would think that the two signs were related, that the instructions are clear...

DO NOT BE DECEIVED!!!

This sign is apparently a mirage cleverly designed to make you miss your flight while you leisurely eat your croissant, only to realize at the next to last minute that your flight has just been called for final boarding. You race to get through security without your panicked sweaty face arousing suspicion and force the airplane to wait while security gives you an extra forceful pat-down. Dodging critical glances from the clever skeptics that have already boarded, and sharing sympathetic “hurry!” exclamations with your fellow duped sprinters, you will spend the majority part of your layover on hold waiting to argue with dark-side-of-the-force Northwest agents about the idiocy of putting up misleading signs.

"It was perfectly clear that we meant that you should be at the GATE 30 minutes prior to your flight."

Learn from my mistakes, trust no one