Boarding Pass

Yesterday I had to pack all my shit up and get on another flight to trek another obscene distance in the air during peak holiday travel dates. When I booked this flight, I figured everyone would be sleeping off their hangovers and checking my bags swiftly and jumping on my flight just as fast would be no problem at all. The only problem with this scenario is that I gave myself only two hours before my flight departed to complete just this one task, and the line to do said task was roughly 5,000 people long.

As I wandered from the train platform through the parking structure and up to the terminal entrance, I thought it was really weird that there were so many people just standing around the parking lot with their suitcases. Had I looked more closely at their formation in the parking structure, I would have noticed that they were neatly aligned in a zigzag pattern across the entire floor of the garage, winding their way backwards through the ticketing terminal and all the way back to the doors I was about to walk through. Which meant my quick jaunt to check my bag was really going to be a three hour ordeal which included a cast of thousands of weary travelers just like me who were all just standing around in the freezing parking garage.

I typically spend my entire life avoiding all situations where I have to stand in any sort of line. At the airport, certainly some waiting is going to happen, but hours and hours of it alongside upset people drains your very soul. It has to, because nothing else would explain the fistfight that broke out between two grown men over a spot in line or what looked like the National Guard that was on hand to usher people to the end of the line, all those 400 yards away. At this point, maybe and hour and a half of standing in line behind me, I reached my absolute limit of calmness and collectedness. It started slow and snowballed before I could stop it. The horrible line mixed with memories of things that happened the day before started to flood over me and I did something I haven’t done in years, something I’m entirely ashamed of and confounded by: I started crying in public.

It wasn’t weeping or sobbing it was just a quiet release of pent up tears and sadness and hurt, stuffed down to the recesses of my being for years and years. I just stood there like an asshole with my stupid toile suitcase and stupid purse and coat with tears running down my cheeks because, apparently, I am no longer able to deal. I didn’t want to be that person who can’t keep their shit together because of some stupid line at the airport but I was that fucking person, and everyone knew it, and I just stood there letting them watch me fall to pieces.

And then as the line moved forward I ended up standing next to this behemoth of a man, tall and rugged like a statue of Zeus in a fancy corduroy blazer and expensive jeans. I looked up at him all pathetic like with this heartbreak and confusion pouring out of me, and he reached over the line divider with his big strong hand and wiped away a single tear that had stuck itself to my cheek. It was like his entire purpose in life was to reach out to the faces of poor little girls and catch their tears in his special tear catching apparatus that takes the form of the arm of some kind of Greek god. He must have some purpose for the tears he collects, perhaps to mix them altogether to form the most pitiable human being on the planet, who knows, but he does it wonderfully.

He said to me, “It’s gonna be ok. You’re almost to the end.” And I thought OMG I AM ALMOST TO THE END! The end of everything! Of this stupid line and this stupid heartache and these stupid feelings I never should have had, he’s right! It’s almost over! And by the time I checked my bag in he was gone in the crowd of boarding passes and carryon luggage, lost into the ether of his own goodwill, I presume. I went to the bathroom to try and compose myself and look myself in the eyes and say, It will be ok. You’ll get through this. Hang in there.

I practiced my speech all the way through my personal patdown at security, through the crowded terminal, past hundreds of people in restaurants and shops and lines for this and that until I got to the bathroom and walked straight to the mirror above the sinks. I looked myself right in the face and realized that the mysterious angel who had comforted me in my time of need had also wiped some disgusting black shit all over the right side of my face. In the process of catching my falling tears and leading me to believe I could get on with my life, he had used his dirtiest hand that was covered in some dark, sticky coal-like substance to wipe my face dry.

The woman washing her hands next to me grimaced and said, “What’d you get on your face!?”

And I just sighed and said, “I let some stranger in the ticketing line rub his hands on me because I kind of thought he might be Jesus.”