[thoughts on airports, and other things too]

I have always adored airports, truly, deeply. Possibly because everytime I step foot in one I am 74% convinced that I will see Conan O'Brien, or some lesser celebrity (so far, my best is Jerry Springer). I will forever be grateful to my mother for working at Delta for twentysomething years, allowing me the means to travel, and to Georgia, for--incongruously enough--having the world's busiest airport. It always proved the perfect playground for my highly melodramatic elementary-school mind. There is an energy and possibility amongst all those people and suitcases and destinations and colliding cultures that is intoxicating, and hard to match elsewhere.

Furthermore, everything feels more important in airports. Make eye contact with a stranger on the train to your gate and you will feel like you just had the most meaningful interaction of your life. Every glance may be filled with longing and ache and imbued with whatever significance you choose--the chance of our encounters on earth, the inability to genuinely connect with others in the fast-paced modern world, the things we barely catch, or miss--or something else equally true but pretentious. Stare blankly at the tunnel whizzing past your window, lock eyes furtively with a lonely-looking stranger, and feel like you both just communicated the meaning of the world.

Crank up The Kinks on your Ipod and pretend that you are in a Wes Anderson movie.
(Even if you don't admit that's what you're doing, because you can't completely admit to somewhat liking him).

[I recognize and accept that the above description could just be me being completely ridiculous.]

I love how airports give you license to feel like the most important person in the world--much like driving on the interstate gives you license to feel like the smartest person in the world. I find this to be especially true if a) you are traveling alone, and b) (ladies) if you are wearing heels. For gentlemen, a sportscoat will suffice. This somewhat levels the playing field between you and the businessmen no doubt swarming your gate, armed with laptops and ear-fastened, hands-free cell phones, who, it must be said, seem to actually think they are the most important people in the world. Walk purposefully down the terminal. Deliberately check your watch in a harried manner. Talk tersely into your cell phone (even if no one is on the other line). You, my friend, are going places!

My sister and I used to have a game we played when we were fortunate enough to land first-class on a plane, due to my mother's sway over the standby list, cemented by her years of employee-ship. We called it "Kingsley and Stoneman." Kingsley and Stoneman were cutthroat New York businessmen who routinely called all their employees by their last names and fired them over the airplane dinner. The script went a little something like this:

Kingsley or Stoneman: [the following said in the most convincing Yankee accent that 5th grade Georgian girls could manage]: "Hey, Leibovitz, how are yeh? Yeh enjoyin' yeh vacation? Well, here's an idea: why don't yeh go ahead and make it PERMANENT?!?! That's right--YEH FOY-EHD!"

[That's right; Kingsley and Stoneman extensively utilized "you're fired" long before Donald Trump made it a catchphrase. Take note].

I sometimes wonder if airport businessmen are just caught up in the thrill of pretending.

[Do you ever feel officially grown up? Or do you spend most of your grown up moments as a bewildered, delighted impostor?]