2005-07-03 - 12:03

Thinking in lyrics, eating fruit salad.

O’Hare international Airport is a circus and I can’t help but feel like I’m part of the sideshow. They offer us a single standby seat after we miss our connecting flight because of something they fouled up and they ask if we want to split up. Right, one of us sitting at the airport in Philly and one sitting in a airport in Chicago. In my head I’m singing Taking Back Sunday, “If we go down, we go down together...” We tell them no and sit back down, discussing the game plan for the next two hours while we wait for another flight.

Ten minutes later, the ticket agent calls Beth up to the counter and tells her we should stick around, it looks like they’ll be able to get us on this flight. She fusses with the computer, makes a call, calls us back up to the counter and tells us to go wait by the door they’ll be up to get us. As we’re turning to walk to the door to people run up to the counter after clearly having just marathoned their way through the terminals and ask if the plane is still on the ground. The ticket agent asks who they are and they tell her and she looks at her computer screen and then remorsefully at us. “I’m sorry,” one of them says, genuinely contrite as they take the last two seats on the plane, leaving us in Chicago for another two hours.

An hour earlier we had been sitting in the waiting area watching the standby dance for a flight to Dallas. A tall, blonde linebacker type sporting University of Kentucky colors hopped up and down and paced back and forth while he waited to see if he would be getting on the plane. People jumped when they heard their names called and glided to the counter like they’d won the lottery and would soon be buying themselves Bentleys. They disappeared down the jet way, relieved they wouldn’t be staying at O’Hare. I thought the blonde guy was going to produce a litter of kittens when they called his name. He scooped up his backpack and followed the short procession of passengers towards the belly of the aircraft. I leaned to Beth, “My sudden love for humanity sickens me.” She laughed. “In an hour, that’s going to be us.”

After we don’t get on the flight we pick up our boarding passes for a flight we’re already confirmed on and I say, “May we eat a snack now?” Amused by the almost of the flight, I feel the first tendrils of hunger creeping into my consciousness. I don’t handle being hungry well; I have to eat right when my body tells me or I can become completely insufferable in a span of fifteen minutes. The thing is, in the past, I’ve cultivated the habit of using food as a means to punish-both in its presence and its absence, so part of me always feels like I’m being punished when I’m hungry. This is irritating because A. I know its not true and B. I can’t identify what it is I’ve done wrong, so I don’t know what I can do to fix it. I hate not being able to do something about a problem.

The first place we stop is a salad place and I get in the line; Beth decides to walk towards the new gate where there are more options. The menu has a tomato basil salad listed, which is pleasing until I get closer to the counter and realize it’s a tomato basil pasta salad. “Eww, I think,” and decide to head towards the food court. This is unfortunately during that fifteen minutes where I can stay sane or get bitchy.

I turn on my phone to find that I have three voice mails so I dial and listen. The first one makes me laugh, the second one I think was lost on the network because it predates the first one and the third one I get two words into before my phone announces its inevitable demise via a beat during which I can’t hear any of the message. This is where I lose it. Standing in the airport, I hang up the phone, take a deep breath and look at my feet reminding myself its just hunger and that I can have a snack and it will be okay. I feel a little ridiculous when my phone beeps to tell me I have a text message and I look down to see its from Beth. Its telling me where she is in the airport. I turn around and head back that way.

Beth has found the sports bar in the terminal and has coerced the bartender into putting on NBC so she can watch a replay of Venus Williams’ semifinal match. “Where’s your salad?” she asks.

“I decided against it,” I respond.

“Would you like some pizza?” She asks, offering me a bite of her pepperoni. I shake my head and look around.

“No, I’d rather be miserable.” I notice that at the other end of the bar where Beth got her pizza they also have fruit salad and yogurt. “They have fruit salad,” I say. Beth nods in agreement. I get some fruit salad and some peach yogurt and some water and I sit down and take a few deep breaths. Normal people aren’t like this, I think. I look up in time to watch match point followed by Venus Williams jumping up and down. I have to smile at this. Venus hasn’t won a major in three years and on Saturday she’s going to have a shot at one. In an hour, we’ll be on a plane and in three hours we’ll be in Philadelphia and in four hours we’ll be seeing bits of America’s history, things like the liberty bell and the house of the fictitious Betsy Ross. That’s pretty cool. Even cooler than that, tomorrow we’ll be standing outside the Philadelphia art museum watching Def Leppard and Alicia Keys and Bon Jovi and Jay-Z, all in attempt to raise awareness and to get our governments to do something good. Yes.

0 Comments

Artificial Sound for the Artificial World: Emily's mix CD

Still more noir than you are.