Friday, January 23, 2009

Airport Woes

I should really rename this blog "the road to my first heart attack: an intimate journey between reader and writer down the path to congestive heart failure" because everything I write about has a tendency to raise my blood pressure. Right now, my ire is focused to the small man sitting about seventy-five feet away from me.

My dislike of this man is compounded by the fact that I should have arrived in Salt Lake City about twenty minutes ago. Instead, I'm sitting in BOI, no end in sight to me in Idaho. And, because I'm rather miserable - I feel much better by letting you know all about it.

The man - the little man - is talking loudly. Loud enough that I can hear his entire conversation. His entire CELL phone conversation. I'm pretty sure his loudness is the goal. Apparently he is a VERY IMPORTANT PERSON. Apparently, he has CLIENTS. Apparently his clients want to DEDUCT things. They want to ITEMIZE things. He just loudly SCOFFED at the idea of an AUDIT. He just had a lengthy diatribe about the KETCHUM property, just to show that not only is HE a VIP, but his CLIENT is too. BRUCE WILLIS? HARRISON FORD? KATHY GRIFFIN? Who KNOWS who could be on the other end of the phone.

I'm pretty sure he's actually making this up. I'm pretty sure this person he's loudly talking to does not exist. He just wants us to know HOW important he IS while being stuck because HE is inconvenienced. He is IMPORTANT and the PLANE should take off JUST FOR HIM.

This brings me back to my brief love affair with Social Psychology. How people interact with others when they are either STRESSED, PISSED or just want to be NOTICED. Case in point is the Ringtone. The more obnoxious the ring-tone the more obnoxious the person. The more obnoxious the person, the longer they will wait to answer their phone when it is ringing. For example: Douchie McDouchington, twenty five feet to my left, has Speedy Gonzolez as his ring-tone "Andale Andale - Arriba Arriba (vrooooom).....Andale Andale, Arriba Arriba (vrooooom)" His phone has rang anywhere between four and seventy-six times in the last twenty minutes. Contrast that to Hottie in the Green Pea Coat (not Pea Green Coat) who has the meek and mild Cingular Ring Tone.

People are frantically trying to re-book flights. I'm personally just sitting here because I'm pretty confident my flight is going to take off sometime before 9am tomorrow morning. But I've heard almost everyone's personal story - just by sitting here and type type typing on my comptuer. We have VIP Accountant Man; we have Angry Lawyer One and Angry Lawyer Two (I am just Cynical Lawyer Sixteen) they have clients too, but they either don't speak about them or don't talk loudly enough that I can hear. This is probably a good thing: even Angry Lawyers (especially Angry Lawyers) can get in trouble with the bar); we have I Have To Get To Vegas Now; (followed by I Have to Get To (insert city here). No one is visibly crying...yet. Just me...a little...on the inside.