A girl sitting across from us at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport said, “She had a yeast infection, but for several weeks she was ‘secretly’ convinced that she had a clap. “I thought so,” he told his friends in an improbable tone. – whisper.
Even if you’re not familiar with this terminology, all you need to know is that clapping isn’t some magical disease that causes you to unconsciously clap at different times of the day. no. “Applause” is code for gonorrhea, and no one clap for gonorrhea. Not when you’re infected, not when you’re itchy, not when you tell someone you’re infected, not when you clap without knowing that person will use it later at the airport. A persuasive tool to convey the importance of annual health checkups.
Don’t think for a second that I’m trying to make you jealous about the attractions of airports and travel. Not all overheard conversations are this fascinating. In fact, the most common conversation I hear at airports, and the real reason people travel, is actually a pretty stupid conversation.
Before we get into that, let me share what I think are the top three reasons people go to the airport.
Number 3 on the list of reasons why we go to the airport is for travel. That is correct. “Go places” ranks third on his list because, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I want to leave the house.
Coming in second is having our days ruined by TSA agents. The Transportation Security Administration assumes that we can’t think of a way to ruin our day, and rightly so. So they placed a TSA officer between us and the plane. These “agents” have so much power that they don’t know how to use it.
So, naturally, they exploit it.
The first thing that comes up, and the most common conversation I hear while traveling, is to loudly rank the airports I’ve been to.
That is correct.
When navigating through airports for work or family vacations, conversations about airports people have been to dominate all other conversations. The conversation always ends with me saying there’s nothing worse than having to go to LAX.
It’s cool to hate LAX. Hating LAX is especially cool if you live in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Angelenos worth the salt of the Celtic River and unfinished movie scripts will not be left dead at LAX.
No, ladies, not when you can fly from Bob Hope, John Wayne, or Daugherty Field.
I took a flight from LAX.
In fact, with the exception of LaGuardia and JFK, I’ve flown out of every airport known to be the most difficult to travel to: Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Dallas. Do not confuse. I’ve flown to Dulles Island before, but I don’t remember it well enough to remember it, and neither do I.
I don’t understand the hostility towards LAX. It grew with the city and responded to the city. And be honest, have you ever been to Los Angeles? No wonder LAX looks like this.
I understand that LAX is a large city airport. After I arrived at my gate, I realized that my gate was not a gate but a bus stop. So I wait alongside everyone assigned to this bus stop for the next bus that will take me to another small airport within this huge airport. And they do it by running down the middle of the fairway, avoiding planes about to take off or land, and when you get to that terminal you find yourself in another, much smaller, more upscale Feels like you’re in a place – but it’s not better than an airport.
When the San Francisco Airport Commission asked architects to design Terminal 2, they wanted a space that would capture the essence of the city while still feeling calm and happy. They forgot to consider the fact that no one is happy and calm while traveling.
As a traveling salesman, I can tell you this is something I see at every airport I go to. Everyone is probably upset and wondering why they fell into the myth of big travel, where it is said that one can only find oneself by traveling to new places.
This is a scam because I don’t see a single person having fun. But we move forward on our itinerary to visit the next big tourist attraction that’s trending on Instagram. At that time, we probably didn’t see a single tourist attraction in the nearest area. We buy into the idea that travel is the only thing that can make us feel better, as if all we need is a plane ticket to find happiness.
It’s so buried in our general consciousness that we just accept it.
Take, for example, the New York Times best-selling book “Eat Pray Love.” According to this book, you cannot eat, pray, or love at home. You have to go elsewhere for that. The name of this book should be “Travel, Eat, Travel, Pray, Travel, Love, Travel Home.” Sure, it’s a less appealing title, but it’s a more accurate one.
If you can’t afford to travel, forget it. Happiness is not for the poor.
Therefore, we all move forward with a desire to travel, a desire to find ourselves in more exotic destinations, rather than in the exotic places where we actually live. Because of that, we find ourselves at the airport loudly hating LAX while discussing every airport we’ve ever been to.
That’s not such a bad thing, I really think so.
At least it’s better than clapping, even if it’s “low-key.”
Carlos Garvillas is an award-winning essayist and storyteller who documents his turbulent upbringing in Colombia, his immigrant experience in California, and his unconventional upbringing of two daughters. His essays have appeared in Scribe, The Memoirist, Your Tango, and other magazines.
