You’ll Be Selling Popcorn at the Airport

A reflection on history’s most fascinating intersections.

The idea was to get her to fall asleep. Ains­ley was tired; we all were. Weather had delayed our flight, the final flight from Cleve­land back to Sioux Falls, for at least an hour Ian was con­tent to re-watch Frozen yet another time, whereas Ains­ley, at 20 months, wasn’t so eas­ily pla­cated. I got her into the stroller and pushed on.

“Let’s see what’s going on,” I said, and we joined the throng.

I’ve always loved people-watching, and there’s no bet­ter place than at the air­port. An air­port is a unique nexus in human exis­tence, pulling together more dis­parate peo­ple in a more rou­tine fash­ion than has ever been possible.

Cer­tainly, there have always been trav­el­ers’ hubs, great inter­sec­tions or ports of renown. Before air travel, how­ever, none could boast of fling­ing its tran­sients so far and so eas­ily. This melt­ing pot of patrons pro­vided me the per­fect enter­tain­ment for my monot­o­nous round trips.

A cart oper­a­tor passed us, the vision of a char­i­o­teer lord­ing over his metal steed, and slowed to honk at the shuf­fling masses unaware of his urgency. He was clean-cut with short, spiked hair. Small, dark ear­lobe gauges swung with the his inter­mit­tent progress. Black, rec­tan­gu­lar glasses framed his eyes.

As the dri­ver moved on, I heard him say, “My par­ents… I grew up in the poor part of town.” Then he dis­ap­peared with his bounty of trav­el­ers, and I pushed my own steady on.

“Well,” I heard a woman say as she removed her smart phone from her ear, “I think I just got *both* days off.” Her voice lifted with excite­ment, but her dis­tracted male com­pan­ion sim­ply rum­maged through his bag. “Oh, yeah?” he mur­mured, but it was her turn to show dis­in­ter­est, and the good news evap­o­rated between them.

I watched a cou­ple of young men decide to pur­chase a new hik­ing pack at a sport­ing goods kiosk. A worker extended a long hook to retrieve the bag from the high­est row of mer­chan­dise. The sharp store light­ing flared around them like a sci­ence fic­tion movie.

I encoun­tered the same fam­ily of seven sev­eral times. At first the four girls sprawled across a row of seats, brightly col­ored book bags scat­tered around and upon them. The chil­dren dot­ted ages from early teenage to infancy, the youngest strapped against mom in a black fab­ric sling dot­ted in white fig­ures I couldn’t discern.

Then they were lead­ing each other down the cor­ri­dor, hand-in-hand-in-hand, like a human daisy-chain. Mom lead them right up to the short­est McDonald’s line. With every­one accounted for, they dropped hands and resumed look­ing bored and exhausted.

There were other recur­ring char­ac­ters. Take the five employ­ees required to man­age the gourmet pop­corn area. Each worker stood before a dif­fer­ent vari­ety: orig­i­nal, ched­dar, ket­tle, choco­late, and cash reg­is­ter. When­ever I passed by, I found each worker stooped over his or her con­fec­tion, elbows rest­ing atop the counter, chin rest­ing atop hands, wait­ing. Yet each time their stores of treats appeared more and more depleted, unlike the line at Star­bucks.

I watched as a jan­i­tor made his way down the con­course, incon­ve­nienc­ing men and women equally at every restroom on the floor. A sol­dier with a tight but opti­mistic smile found his gate, then moved to another one, then bought a pizza. A man enjoyed a pasta dish at Wolf­gang Puck’s for an hour and change. The fam­ily of seven reclaimed their row.

I won­der what peo­ple thought of me, a gray­ing, bearded man in his mid-thirties, push­ing around a lethar­gic but alert tod­dler for an eter­nity. From time to time, he would stop to peer at the lit­tle blondy who would smile back at his sigh. And he would always look straight up as they passed beneath the bra­chiosaurus skele­ton replica.

Even­tu­ally I got the text to head back. I can’t count how many miles I walked in that finite space. As I joined my fam­ily — and the new friends they’d made in wait­ing — I bid a silent farewell to the tran­sient friend­ships I’d made in motion.

Peo­ple watch­ing at O’Hare taught me some­thing I already knew: every­one is a stereo­type from far away. Thank­fully, air­ports bring peo­ple closer.