Airport Pride and Prejudice

AA 2078 DEP-5:32 YYZ ARR-7:05 LGA. As if all the acronyms and codes will quicken the flight. How do they code a two-hour delay? Time doesn’t run smoothly, some minutes run slower than others. The airplane has landed a quarter of an hour earlier, and we’re still in it, and every minute goes by much slower than the minutes while we were in the air. Finally the doors open, and I can feel the change in pressure and the odor of jet-fuel slowly permeating the round body of the airplane, overtaking the smell of sweat of a hundred-odd passengers that were crammed in this medium size airliner with full winter gear on, not prepared for over-heating. I finally get up, putting the book I was reading back into my bag. A sad book about stereotypes of race and identity, and the ways they are constructed and reified in the ostensibly raceless, genderless, classless online world. I look for my coat, and can’t find it. Items have shifted during the flight. I don’t so much care about the coat, but my cell phone was in its pocket. What if I lose my cell phone? How many contacts will I lose? Will there be people I will stop communicating with if I lose their number? With my laptop battery nearing the end of its life working at most for an hour, I have recently resorted to a new time-killing game: while sitting in the airport terminals I often find myself in, I manage the contact list. Finding someone that you’re sure you’ll never call again and deleting them, gives you extra points. It was easy when I started with 400 numbers. It’s getting harder with every delayed flight.
I spot my coat in an overhead compartment two rows back, and ask a woman standing underneath it to pass it to me. Although there are many passengers still blocking the isle in front of me, the people behind me are getting nervous, because my coat-hunting took a few seconds too long. It’s not only the smell of jet-fuel that infuses the plane when you land in LaGuardia, its New York City style tension itself. New Yorkers call it energy. Visitors usually call it stress after a few days. I thank the woman with a nod, as I feel the cell phone in my pocket, and make my way out.
“Excuse me” the woman that handed me my coat shouts behind me on the concourse. “Excuse me, sir, yes I’m talking to you” I don’t usually interpolate myself when random people shout, but with her next “excuse me” I finally understand she’s talking to me.
“Yes ma’am, how can I help you?”
“You should have thanked me, you American prick”
Now it’s my turn to say “Excuse me”
“Mam, I did thank you, but I apologize if you didn’t hear it. So thank you again”
“You should have thanked me before, you prick” she repeats the badmouthing. I look at her, startled by the attack that came out of nowhere. She looks like a young Whoopi Goldberg, but much less attractive. Holding a plastic bag in her hand, her eyes narrowing like those of an animal under attack.
“Mam, let me apologize again, and officially thank you for handing me my coat” I say out load, and whisper to myself in a voice she can’t hear “you have endowed our country with great service, and we thank you for that.” She waves her hand at me, wrist first,
“Get away from me, all you Americans are the same”
Now I’m following her as she steps into one of the concourse’s duty free shops. She goes deeper into the shop, to check a perfume. “Get away from me, American prick”
“I’m not even American” I say to myself, and remember the book about stereotypes stashed in my bag. I guess we can’t live without those.