People Watching

I am currently sitting in the airport at the Minneapolis/St Paul Airport (MSP). **NOTE - I was when I wrote this, but I'm safely on the ground in Chicago now. **

Waiting on my Northwerst flight back to Chicago – Midway (MDW). Another gate agent just came over the airwaves and said that they’re boarding a flight bound for Chicago but it’s may be on hold because of weather in Chicago – FUCK!

Well at least I’m going home and not heading somewhere important, worse comes to worse I’ll just go in late to work tomorrow – oh wait I can’t, I’m doing a training at 10:00, well I could always show up at 9:45.

I love the airport, it’s a great way to people watch. I don’t know how you are, but I get a little antsy traveling, so I prefer being to the airport early and making sure that I’m not gonna miss my flight etc. The Boyfriend on the other hand would have no problems getting to the airport 20 minutes before his flight takes off – that just totally wigs me out and causes major anxiety. For example, today one of the vendors that was at our “show” was driving this way, so I hitched a ride with him. I got to the airport 2.5 hours in advance, sailed through security and even had the opportunity to sit at “Chili’s” and have some “Asian Sesame Boneless Chicken Wings” all the while these straight guys were watching some baseball game on TV. What’s with all the sports all of a sudden, they’re everywhere.

Well I guess they’re everywhere all the time, but most of the time I shield myself from it. Whenever I see a sporting event on TV I hopefully switch over to PBS in hopes of catching “The Antiques Roadshow” or perhaps “Cooking with Capriel” (Hey she got a husband, I figured that dyke would never get married, but good for her, {for the record I don’t really know if she’s a lesbian so don’t yell at me}).

Do you enjoy people watching? I do! The airport is the best place for it, you get non-local people to stare at for an indefinite amount of time. The Mall is good as well, but after 20 minutes of watching all the people in one area start to look alike, at least at the airport you get a good mix of diverse people.

For example, sitting across from me is the quite young couple reading books, they look a little granola but he’s wearing good shoes and his hair is immaculate (I wish my hair looked that good long), there’s the guy carrying the worn out paper grocery bag with handles, all the while walking around the gate area with sandals and god forbid white socks (he’s obviously not married because otherwise he’d be wearing black socks).

There’s the obviously gay flight attendant who’s waiting to get on the plane. As you have probably guessed, I am an expert in this channel, but let me tell you how I know: 5’11”, 230 lbs (big girl), latinesque with his hair plastered down so he’s got sort of a Caesar cut, with “sculpted” sideburns that reach almost to his chin, which in turn is almost resting on his chest. But to top it off, the wheels on his carryon – LIGHT UP with red and blue lights as he is “floating” toward the gate – I’m such a jealous gadget Queen - I want some of those.

There’s the short, thin straight boy reading a Maxim magazine and leering at all the girls walking by. There’s the Grandma & Grandpa holding hands sitting quietly while Husband and Wife carry on a LOUD conversation even though they’re sitting right next to each other.

There’s the single woman traveling with a small child in one of those big buggy’s that people usually use to run with their child. It’s not until they sit down that you discover that either the mother or the child is deaf and they are communicating via sign language.

There are numerous people on their cellphones, me on my laptop, others on their PDA’s, a few people on the payphones. There’s the guy who looks like a cross between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eric Stoltz when he played the guy in Mask.

I wonder whom I’ll be sitting next to? The Big Guy sitting next to me drinking a diet Coke and eating a bag of M&M’s? Or perhaps the couple that just got done eating curry they pulled out of their carryon bags, the lady with a hair color that doesn’t appear in nature……it’s always a gamble isn’t it?