What Am I Doing? What Are You Doing? WTF Am I?

I wrote this while sitting in an airport waiting out a 5 hour plane delay a few weeks back.  I just remembered I had it. It's amusing and confusing.  Enjoy.

06/13/2011 9:00AM - As I write this, I am sitting in the Memphis Int'l Airport waiting for my connection to Baltimore.  The F'ers delayed the flight by like 4 or 5 hours for a reason I don’t even know yet.  So….I'm frickin' stuck sitting here because there aren't any more flights to MD.  Wi-Fi isn't even free here in the airport. I’m speechless at this discovery. Actually I do think I said something to the fact of “You have got to be shitting me.”  So, I was not totally speechless.

Thank goodness for my iPad and its silly apps or I would be nuts in about an hour. The iPad might delay me from going nuts for maybe two hours, who knows. Ha Ha. I'm going to have to call someone about this injustice of no free Wi-Fi though.  I’m pretty sure the Constitution says everyone gets free Wi-Fi. Am I right? What? No??? 

Man. Those “founding fathers” can kiss my ass.

Have you ever people-watched in the airport?  It is a hoot. I'm a people watcher anyway, but the airport is a whole different ballgame. 

You have the ragged family of 5 trying to make their connection to Orlando, but little Suzie understandably doesn't want to run the entire length of the concourse.  Temper tantrums ensue from both Suzie AND the Mom and Dad. Then Mom and Dad bicker at each other about her behavior and their respective faults for correcting it. They go from being sweetly coercing to loudly demanding in 1.3 seconds while trying to get this kid on the plane.  We’ve all been there.  It is wicked funny when it happens to other people though.

Look out!  Here comes Mr. Self-Important Salesman on the cell phone.  He’s walking briskly while toting a laptop computer bag on his shoulder, and dragging a roller suitcase that he insists on carrying on the plane even though it is way too MF'n big.  Everyone is in his way, and its GD funny.  I find it funny because I hate this guy.  He takes FOREVER to board the plane because has to cram the living hell out of this bag into the overhead.  This holds up the line of people getting on.  Then he sits down, only to remember he forgot his Jerkoff Salesman Quarterly magazine inside.  He gets up quickly and drags out the bag and starts the process over again.  Then it takes him forever to get it off the plane too.  Rest assured though wearied travelers, he has a little wiener.

Then finally we have the chick with the big cans, walking and strutting because she WANTS you to notice her. She’s wearing a figure-hugging skirt and blouse with more than enough cleavage spilling out to drown someone. But yet when she catches the Dad who is going to Orlando staring at the "assets" God blessed her with, she looks all offended. Get real sweetie. Everyone on the concourse noticed the freshly skinned knees too. You aren't fooling anyone.

Then of course there is me. Watching, judging, and laughing inside at things I know I probably shouldn't.  While I'm doing this, I know there is a guy across the terminal doing the very same thing I am, and he is probably judging the preppy-dressed d-bag (me) sitting all slouched in his seat typing on his pretentious iPad. I probably do look like a real douche though.

But while I sit here, I do wonder other things about these people. I think about how that lady across the way is boarding a plane for Wichita, and might be going to see her dying Aunt.  How that guy right down the aisle may be on his way to Seattle to be interviewing with Microsoft. And how that guy boarding the plane to Vegas could gamble away his life savings and get Syphilis from a tranny hooker in a Mandalay Bay poolside cabana.

So many people leading lives we know nothing about.  All of us driven by a different reason or purpose for doing what we are doing.  What are we doing? Is it that GD important? Do we really know what our purpose is?

But yet here we are, all stuck in Terminal B of the Memphis Airport waiting to get where our purpose is taking us.  Chances are probably good we are unknowingly getting in the way of someone else's purpose so our purpose can be achieved.

That is of course, if you know what your purpose is.

Most days I’d like to “think” I know what my purpose is. Some days though I wonder if what I'm doing is the best way to achieve that purpose.  Then there are some days I wonder if what I’m doing even matters at all.  It’s pretty fluid most days.

That is what I think of while sitting in an airport by myself.  All of these people going their own ways with purposes unrelated to anyone else. Crossing paths with hundreds of people and unknowingly affecting a piece of another’s personal missions that day.  We all have everything and nothing in common at the same time.

What we have most in common though is that most of us just want to get from Point A to Point B with minimal hassle. We also depend on a crew of people you secretly hope didn't enjoy 15 Jack and Cokes for breakfast, or attend a flight school at Bin Laden University.

All of it happens every day.  It is pretty wild when you think about it.

Oh, when I was talking about the guy going to Vegas, did I say “he could” gamble everything away and get an STD from the tranny hooker?  I'm sorry, I misspoke. I meant to say "he will."  He will.  It’s Vegas baby.

Have a good flight y’all.