Airports are ugly places. Especially if you're stranded in the Toronto Pearson International for eight hours, waiting for your connecting flight. Well, it could be worse. I could be stuck here for nine hours. Or for eight hours and thirty minutes. Or eight hours and ten minutes. It isn't just the crowding and the screaming kids, it's the sense of being stranded in some megamall where all your food options are going to be scandalously overpriced. I just became thirty dollars poorer and all I had to show for it was an omelette, cut rate fried potatoes, a small hunk or two of toast and orange juice and coffee. Nothing at all special. Just costly. But they can get away with shafting the customers because we really have few options in these places. The passengers, if they are travelling alone, usually look miserable and harried, and if you so much as smile at anyone you get answered with a scowl, as in, how dare you be friendly or even just a little bit happy, we are in an airport, after all, where I am supposed to be isolated and miserable.
At least the passenger sitting next to me overnight was friendly. I don't think she got any sleep, she was busy looking at movies and suchlike (oh, a little commentary here about the movie selections. Some of it is really suitable for adults only. Like the image I caught on a screen in a seat in front of me of a man and woman having sex inside a porta potty, and yes the toilet was a shakin'. I am still trying to unsee that, by the way.) Anyway, she was a bit restless, the woman next to me, I mean, not the one making whoopie in a plastic outhouse, and I was frequently getting poked in the ribs, etc, but she really wasn't that annoying, and besides, she was friendly and warm, and it turns out that she is also a flight attendant taking some time off (great place to take a break if you already work for an airline, the same one even). When I told her of my travel itinerary, she joked that when I get home I'll be as brown as she is (she is from Trinidad). Well, she was nice, and that's what can happen when you're pleasant with people on a flight. When I woke up I even said good morning to both her, and to the white woman on my right, who wasn't really that friendly, but go figure, eh?
Really, my one big complaint about that flight was that I couldn't even put my shoes back on my feet until I was getting off the plane. Fortunately,one of the fight attendants directed me to an empty seat in business class so I could sit comfortably while properly tying them, etc. So, at last I get to say that I got to sit in business class!
I really do resent this kind of harsh bigass capitalism that gets foisted on us in airports, but I suppose it can't be helped. This is an international scourge and airports are international places, if ever there ever were any, so I am going to conclude here that at least I can get to where I want to go in the world, amd even the sore legs and sore knee from trying to sleep in a cramped economy seat while flying Air Houdini is still a worthy tradeoff. And even the random smiles from strangers who, like me, often probably wish we could all be better and maybe just do a little better by one another. Over and out, Gentle Reader. Now, I am going to spend a bankroll on a Toblerone, just after signing off from this little screed de jour, or in Spanish ¡despotricado al día!
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