I feel like I know you all well enough now to share something about myself: I don't hate a lot of things, but I fucking hate sleeping in airports. Of all the places to wedge one's noggin at night, the space between those crappy airport chair/benches and their steel arm rests is probably the most likely to make me cry when I wake up and remember how awful the world is. Well, that and the piece of cardboard in the garage that my parents made me sleep on growing up. But at least that was home.
Airports in general can be likened to cemeteries in terms of happiness and comfort, with too many people paying their respects and nobody that likes you. But having to sleep in an airport overnight because your flight was cancelled is like having your friend say, Hey, wanna go to a party? Well heck buddy, I'll give you a ride there right now!"" but on the way there he crashes the car into a wall and then as you lie there in the wreckage bleeding he turns to you and politely tells you that you're welcome to pass out wherever you'd please. Except instead of a party, you're just trying to go home, and instead of it being your friend, it's some featureless hag at the customer service desk. And instead of a totaled car, it's a big ol' airplane sitting right outside the gate all ready to go, but it's raining and the crew has worked 13 hours and can't push 16 'cause they're a bunch of pansies with union contracts. The feeling is the same, though.
Bedding down at the gate with an unbuttoned shirt for a blanket and a garment bag for a pillow, you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Worse, you're surrounded by the rest of the loneliest people in the world, all trying to do the same sad thing. And then when that loneliness drives those people to band together into rival gangs and lay claim to the armrest-less benches in Gate C, and you make the mistake of siding with the morbidly obese man and his miserable wife because you thought she'd be scrappy and he'd throw his weight around but you forgot how easily fat and depressed people give up and the clan from Flight 902 out of Dallas declares total victory and demands your meal voucher, it just starts to wear on you. And then when you get banished to the space between the moving walkway and the window to sleep on the metal panel between the two in the area where the worst elevator music is playing non-stop all night and the lights are on, it's like being in a wheelchair and having an open wound on your head and your mom coming over and saying ""oh deary, a boo-boo!"" and then dumping salt on your head and pushing you down the stairs.
Maybe you guys aren't familiar with what it's like to sleep in an airport. I just don't know if I can really successfully convey the experience with words. But it's sort of like finding out you have bone cancer and then getting AIDS. Maybe not that bad. But in any event, I'm not going to risk it again. I've decided to jump on the John Madden boycott bus and bid adieu to planes for good. What will I ride, you ask, if not the skies? Just a little something called the wave of the future: rail. And with a little help from economics and a few well-placed terrorist attacks, I think it's just a matter of time before planes and airports and security checks and baggage claims and waiting and all that stupid shit in SkyMall are phased out entirely.
Until then though, I do have some advice for anyone who finds themselves at 3 A.M. looking at a 12-hour layover in Philly and your hotel voucher turned out to be to a fake hotel and now you're stuck at the gate with the weirdo in the velour jumpsuit eyeing you all creepily but you're having trouble keeping your eyes open because you've been awake for 26 hours straight and you're a little worried about what's going to happen when you fall asleep. Piss yourself. It works.
Tell David about your airport activities at dhottinger@wisc.edu.
