Sleeping in airports.
Why.
I am sleeping at the airport tonight.
Two reasons.
My flight boards at 5.10 in the morning.
Therefore it is far easier to be dropped off the night before, rather than the other option of getting up 2.30 am and rousing four kids; a happening which could have less than pleasant consequences for the parent caring for those children while I am away.
There might be some reading this - perhaps many - thinking that it’s still odd. Why not just use Uber or Lyft, or charter a helicopter?
I don’t have a great answer, except I do: we live in the country, on top of a mountain, and though the twinkly city lights seem close at night, they are a river and a good little trek away from the techno-travel luxuries of cheap ride share options. All good though. I have a cool wife, and we took a plus-one date for supper beforehand to a nifty little Swedish bistro. Seventy-five cent vegetarian hot dogs. Can’t beat.
So I am sitting on a bench in D3, with six hours until my flight boards. Am I unhappy?
No. I already miss my wife and children, though the bittersweet cries over the phone of the three-year old scream-singing himself to sleep to the strains of Jesus Loves Me made me feel…home.
Albert.
It’s hard for me to necessarily call him a friend, even a microfriend. Honestly, I don’t even remember his name. But he did his job well; a job that involved putting on rubber gloves and moving his hands over all parts of my body. Primarily the area between belly button and upper thighs. He was friendly and professional-ish and asked how my night was going, amidst explaining exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.
”I’m going to do a full pat-down,” he said. “Do you want to do it in a private area, or here?”
I thought about making a super funny remark about him touching areas of me that are not exactly public in a private area, but thought better, and simply couldn’t think of why it would be important to go anywhere else. “Here’s fine,” I said.
So…why me? Apparently because I had:
A) two bags of trail mix in my backpack; a fact which I learned tonight can flag you, as it comes up on security scanners as looking similar to _____ (my paranoia about making certain types of jest in airports is sufficient that I’m not even going to write it. But this is something new I learned:
“…next time if you’re bringing trail mix,” he said, “Just take it out separately so we can see it.”
Roger that. The second thing:
B) is that I have zippers on my jeans that were of extra interest, so…well, that’s what you get for wearing your fave pair of pants through security.
”All good,” he said finally, waving me through. “Have a good night!”
”You too!” I said. And honestly, I meant it.
…and then.
I was going to settle in, do a little writing or drawing or reading, eat some trail mix and banana, people watch, maybe sleep for a few minutes, that sort of thing. But then my attention was drawn away to an especially interesting exchange.
The exchange was between a Caucasian male traveler, perhaps in his 50s, and a Caucasian male gate supervisor, perhaps in his 60s, and bearing a passing resemblance to actor David Strathairn. Oh, and the first fellow, the baseball-hat wearing drunk gentleman, might have played a first cousin to actor Jason Sudeikis.
David was informing Jason that he (Jason) was not going on the flight, due to his state of inebriation. Jason, bearing a boarding pass and hyper focused logic of the inebriated, was convinced that with the right mix of menacing stance and do you know who I am? logic, that he could work his way on.
As it became clear that David was not backing down, Jason pulled out the trump card, jabbing his finger at David’s chest and demanding to get his ID. His personal identification, so he could give it to his lawyer and make sure he knew who to sue.
”Do you understand?” Jason mumble-yelled, “that I’m not just going to sue the airline, I’m going to have my lawyer sue you. So would you please give me your ID? Give me your ID please. I need to know exactly who to have my lawyer sue.”
David did not do so, and the boarding line thirty feet away continued to grow. Finally David recused himself to help the two gate attendants, and Jason followed along to help, at which point there were 5-7 minutes that passed in which I couldn’t hear the totality of the dialog; dialog which I couldn’t hear, but suspected, looking at body language, that Jason might be one hundred percent responsible for.
Finally, the message began to seep into Jason’s head that despite his very best powers of persuasion, he was not making it onto the aeroplane. He then moved to Phase 3, which consisted of cycling amidst his two or three favourite epithets, one hundred percent of which were either rather unkind ways of referring to body parts that my recent TSA friend had inspected on me in a vain search of illicit substances, or rather thoughtless references to how David could use those body parts in a relationship with another man. To my knowledge, Jason and David, at no point, had engaged in any previous conversation about the nature of David’s sexual preferences, so I suspected that perhaps the considerable amount of alcohol in Jason’s bloodstream was encouraging him to make inferences and extrapolations that were not likely not entirely accurate.
Jason then recused himself, backing away from the counter and the queue of (former) fellow travelers, and invited them to engage in some of the same activities he had just told David to engage in. He slowly disappeared, and I stopped recording…
…but then went to safely follow him and ensure he didn’t accidentally trip over a bag or comfort animal and hurt himself. I saw a couple police officers walking toward me, but on the wrong side of the busy hallway, and it appeared that they might miss the chance to have a lively conversation with Jason, so I helpfully pointed him out and got them going in the right direction.
I spoke with David a short while after and expressed my appreciation for his remarkable aplomb in a tense situation, and he laughed and said “I was just concentrating on ducking if he took a swing at me.” I felt bad for not having joined the conversation earlier, and through some follow up conversations with other microfriends here in the mostly-deserted Gate D3 club, I found out that Jason’s new pals, the Portland cops, will be providing him a complementary place to stay tonight.
Perhaps this is shallow to say, perhaps this says something untoward about me as a father, perhaps I don’t know what it means, but I know that the first thought I had afterwards, was how much I was looking forward to telling our kids about it. I just love talking and conversing and bantering and telling stories with them, and I know they will love it.
I miss them already, and I hope they sleep better than I will.
Goodnight Becca, goodnight kids, goodnight moon, goodnight TSA friend, goodnight David, and goodnight Jason.
Coffee in the morn.
