Airport Love

Peter Moran
Sep 7, 2018 · 5 min read

“I could just ask her where she’s flying,” I reasoned with myself. I had two hours to kill before my flight and I was going to be spending the rest of the week with most of the people I’d typically call to pass time, so that was out of the picture. I didn’t want to finish my podcast and burn out my Bluetooth earbuds (Sidebar — Bluetooth earbuds don’t work on airplane mode, so figure that one out if you want to make money), so I had to choose between speaking to the cute girl next to me or scrolling through my social media apps until I hated myself. I opened Instagram. What was I honestly going to do? Act interested in her destination for two straight hours? That’s absurd. I had about four good stories, three relevant observations, two decent theories and one half-hearted compliment. If I chewed slowly it might take fifteen minutes. Sure, I could take a fake phone call and walk away and never see her again if things went south, but I also needed to pay my bill and finish my meal. Also, I was dressed for sitting on an airplane, not flirting with an Instagram model. Was she really going to ask me what I did for a living and pretend to be interested while I found the sweet spot between bragging about my job and downplaying it enough to be relatable to the negative attitude most of my generation possesses? What about the awkward empty seat between us; were we going to have to make a decision if things went well and another customer needed to be seated? She had nice boots on though, and I usually hate womens’ footwear. My mind wandered. What if she was cool? What if we had a great conversation and we laughed and forgot about the world for a couple hours of feigning interest in the other person’s life while being motivated solely by the opportunity to share our own story with someone else like the selfish humans we all truly are? I reminded myself not to say anything that sounded so pretentious as the prior sentence if we did happen to exchange conversation. But we probably wouldn’t, I decided. Even if things went well, what’s next? We use each other as a comparison for other random meetings, allowing one another to take up emotional real estate that could be afforded someone we actually saw on regular basis and had the opportunity to build something with? I’d pass. I realized that she probably did live in the same city and was probably just flying to her hometown for the weekend and would be back here the same time as I did, so perhaps this wasn’t as much of a long shot as I’d originally figured. “Maybe I should ask where she’s flying?” I wondered. “Maybe I should ask her where she’s flying and then tell her I don’t actually care and try to laugh as I say it and tell her I’d run out of icebreaker ideas and just wanted to chat.” That would really be shooting my shot. But she didn’t look like a normal human being so I figured I shouldn’t act like a normal being, I rationalized, unknowingly comparing the value of womens’ appearances to mens’ conversational ability. I glanced at my phone. Two minutes had passed. I still had a lot of time to kill and the 4G connection was weak. The cards were stacking in favor of conversation with the mystery girl. She was still on her phone, occasionally scanning the room similar to the way I was trying to offhandedly read her. I wondered if she was doing exactly what I was doing before scoffing at the idea and returning to my inner-argument. I imagined how the conversation would go and chuckled as I realized that the one I was having with myself was probably more interesting. If she and I actually spoke, it would inevitably lead to me asking what her passions were and her stumbling over the question and me judging her for not having an immediate response before spitting it back at me causing me to realize I didn’t have a quick answer either. It wouldn’t be worth the momentary sadness it would bring either of us. Perhaps the passing gloom would reinvigorate the desire to distract each other from reality, but it would a tough comeback. But maybe she’d have a good response. Maybe she’d tell me about how passionate she was for something I respected so deeply that I’d fall madly in love with her until she either broke my heart or married me and birthed kids that would disappoint me because they weren’t athletic enough to fulfill my own broken dreams that lead to their existence. She was tall though, so maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe it would be worth it. And that’s all I could hope for, I realized, as I made up my mind to take the leap and speak to her.

“Are you from Buffalo,” she asked me as she glanced at my baggage tag, interrupting my internalized speeding bullet train of irrational thought.

The rest of the details of our hour-long conversation about our past in Buffalo and how we would both be there this weekend and should see each other then can be summed up with the following two words: It wasn’t.

Hot takes:

Something I (used to) hate:

I hate when people use the current time period as a reason for people’s actions/thoughts to be surprising, i.e “It’s 2017 and men still think women shouldn’t play in the NFL.” People used that line in 2016 and 2015 and 2014 and I’ll bet the non-existent sum in my bank account I’ll hear it on New Year’s Day as well. I get it. As we progress as a society we start to realize how backwards some of our prior ways of thinking were and we change, we evolve. What’s wrong in 2017 was wrong in 2016 and wrong in 1916 but there’s less of an excuse to hold those misconceptions because they’re exposed. Everything is out there. Society is so intertwined and things are so publicized that it’s almost impossible not to realize when your thoughts are in the minority. And to be honest, when I started writing this paragraph I really did hate when people used such phrasing, but writing this out has forced me to think more in depth about it and now I feel that it’s completely valid. That’s called being open-minded. I mean, it’s almost 2018. I’m allowed to change my mind.

Something I truly do hate:

Manners. Manners are the perfect example of mindless humans assigning meaning to worthless tradition. Give me substance. I’m not saying that people should all be rude to each other, but if we actually cared about the people we’re supposedly keeping in mind as we use acceptable manners, we’d provide them something of value. Instead of keeping my elbow off the dinner table or placing my fork on the correct side of my plate, how about I just relax, be myself, and encourage you to do the same? Sure, opening a door is nice. It’s a helping hand. And not chewing loudly in front of me or things like that are totally appreciated. But if there was ever a time in which a curtsy contributed any value to another person’s life, it’s passed. Let’s move toward a world of substance and stop wasting our time doing things that no one actually wants to do but everyone is too much of a mental lemming to speak out against.