Airport musings:

Cute little girl during the takeoff from Sitka:

“My favorite color is every color in the world! What is yours?”

“Grey”

“Grey is not color!”

“Why not?”

“Because colors are pretty!”

“You know what makes me really scared?”

“What?”

“Airplanes.”

So as I was walking through the Seattle-Tacoma airport at 3am I realized that when I'm really tired, I start mumbling to myself like a crazy person. Upon further reflection, I remembered that even when I'm not that tired, I often mumble to myself like a crazy person. Then I realized that I was in fact mumbling to myself like a crazy person about mumbling to myself like a crazy person, and at that exact moment, in an otherwise empty terminal, I passed another guy who was mumbling to himself like a crazy person. We made brief eye contact, exchanged knowing glances, and went our separate ways.

Among the crazy-person thoughts that ran through my head during the 3 to 6am sleepless block:

“I wonder when Starbucks wakes up.”

“If I hit the newscaster in the mouth, will it mute all the tvs?”

“4 times 15 is.... is... is.... 45? Yeah! Yeah? Yeeeeeeah.”

“You can brush your teeth with soap, right?”

“No.”

“Well soap is clean.... and I want my teeth clean... I can totall... no that's a bad idea.”

So there was another potentially adorable little girl (I'm really not that creepy, I promise) in front of me on the way to Minneapolis. She had a pastel purple carry-on, and as she lifted it up to her mom, I craned my neck to see which Disney Princess she claimed allegiance to. Unfortunately the bitter truth revealed itself when I saw that it was not in fact a Disney bag, but a Bratz bag. Instantly, all potential for amusement was sucked out of my mind and every otherwise darnest thing she said was stupid and annoying.

“We can't take off because I don't have a carseat!”

“That's because you're on an airplane, dumbass.”

“I I I don't know why planes are so big and still can fly?!”

“Pressure differentials, airspeed, and wing loading. Look it up, little ingrate*.”

*There are lots of ingrates in The Count of Monte Cristo."