Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….
Well! My very first reaction would be "WTF? Where did this cell phone come from, and how did my family know to call me on it???"
But since we are being hypothetical, once I got to the airport, I would go to an airport bookstore to see if they had books with detailed analyses of the current state of the world economy, and at a minimum, buy a copy of The Wall Street Journal and/or The Financial Times.
Now ... in reality, I would get home from the grocery store, and The Tim would either tell me about the call, or it would be on our voicemail. (Yes, we do have voicemail. Because we are all about the modern.) If this were the type of emergency that required The Tim's presence as well, I would need to find someone to come and feed the cats while we were gone before I left for the airport.
So, saying that had been taken care of easily, and I left the house for the airport otherwise in a hurry, I would check out the airport bookstore once I got through security and had promised ownership of my house to TSA in the event they found a killer pen on me or a shoe bomb. If my flight was actually "on time" (hypothetically of course), I would likely buy a shallow magazine to pass the time in the airport and on the plane.
If the flight had been delayed, or cancelled and I had to wait to be rebooked somehow, I would probably still buy the magazine, but also a book, though nothing too serious, and definitely paperback. I would take turns looking at the magazine, reading the book, and people-watching. I find that the airport is an excellent place to devise entire life stories for people. You generally have time to give them names, back stories, and a great story of how/why they are at the airport. (Like for instance, they were at the grocery store, and they got a call about a family emergency ... oh wait, that's what I'm supposed to be doing ...)
9 comments:
LOL I am still laughing over your initial reaction. :-)
I'm not the only one who makes up stories for people I see when I'm people watching? What a relief!
People watching can be better than some books. :-)
I'd have exactly the same reaction with the "how the **** did they find me? And I always have my sock knitting in my bag, so I'd be good to go.
And thanks for the reminder, my passport is close to expiration! Better go get that done.
Same as you. Magazine and light reading paperback. Make that a double latte to go.
Yes, this is a trick question. The answer is "I'd knit the sock I always carry in my purse in case I get stuck behind an accident and am thrust into road rage."
Oh, also, I'd buy a trashy tabloid paper like National Enquirer and laugh at the ridiculousness of the stories. (Sadly, my favorite, Weekly World News, is now on-line only.)
I have two words for you -
Louisville Airport
People watching is a great sport - but I'd want a notebook and pen to write some mini-biographies.
(So many people who answered this week aren't knitters. Poor dears.)
Yep...people watching/inventing stories is so so much fun. :)
I used to drop off/pick up the hubster at all hours and (pre-9/11, of course) and leave my "emergency book" that I always carry at home so I could stock up on magazines I had never read. Phila International bookstores used to have an awesome selection of fashion crap and gossip mags that were delightful. I would arrive at the airport early, grab, preferably, a foreign fashion mag, a British tabloid (Oi! What is the Royal Family doing?! Bugger it all!), a huge bottle of water, and the biggest bag of Cajun snack mix I could get my hands on. Then I would pick a terminal, any terminal, that looked interesting and park myself. Granted, I think I'm supposed to be worrying myself silly about a family predicament but, eh, it's all hypothetical so who cares? And when I'd be there very late at night, I would find out where they were buffing the floor and watch them do doughnuts with the floor buffers.
Oh, sorry I don't knit!
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