airport observations

Airport lobbies are the junk drawers of humanity. Full of fascinating, irritating, useless, priceless subjects. One of my favorite pasttimes is to get on the plane with someone I've been watching and try and guess what they'll do to pass the time in-flight. Particularly, what reading material they choose.

There was a woman waiting for the same flight as we were on, who looked like she should have had the words "My self-esteem went on a permanent vacation and all I got was this large, oversized, non-descript t-shirt" which covered her large, oversized, round-shouldered, slouching frame. Now, I'm a big girl and my point is not that she was large but that she had been well-taught to embrace invisibility as punishment.

Anyway, when we got on the plane, my vantage point enabled me to see her reading material. The perfect match: a binder labeled "The Building Blocks of Successful Leadership" propped up on the tray table, yellow highlighter and mechanical pencil gripped tightly in one hand. Self-help seminars and how-to management courses enrich themselves on the clueless and desperately insecure.

Then there's the cellphone criminals. Some day, I'm afraid, I'm going to lose my shit in an airport while listening to one more person yammer nonsensically on a cellphone with their "public" voice. I know this subject has been beaten to death but I can't leave it alone. And I'm not alone. (I love that there are people out there considering this problem from a design solutions point-of-view!)

I just can't believe that anyone would think that the drivel and minutae of their banal existence is the slightest bit interesting to those poor saps who happened to pull the short stick and end up sitting within earshot. I'm going to lose it and nobody but you, dear reader, will fully understand how long I've resisted.