Airport

Airports are human-crafted spaces that demand a special type of obedience resembling that of highly qualified military personnel. They require a certain uniform acquiescence inherent to forming long lines and waiting patiently. They test how easily you acquire the necessary knowledge of what goes under a metal detector and what does not (even though everyone knows nothing is exempt from the metal detector -- your momentary near-nudity can attest to that). They also test your ability to read, comprehend and successfully report to numbered terminals in the fashion of cattle going to the slaughter.

The airport is a military-esque complex set on assuring that things run smoothly -- except, unfortunately, passengers are not trained personnel. If anything, they tend to be quite the opposite. It seems almost as if they purposefully slow down the efficiency of the airport complex. The line at security, for example, usually extends for miles because people are confounded by the concept of metal detectors. They don’t understand that cellphones and Rolexes are not an extension of their limbs and that they can, surprisingly, go without them for two seconds without suffering fatal blood loss. What’s even worse is that most of these individuals are veteran passengers and yet they somehow believe that next time they won’t have to take their boots off or store their laptop in a separate plastic bin. So they repeat this ritual like the habitual miscreant who continues to rob or not pay for the metro in the hopes that next time they won’t get caught.

The continuous faux-pas of airport behavior are endless. Women continue to wear startlingly massive heels, which are the antipode of comfort and efficiency. At least the only people they are harming are themselves. Passengers who impose their newborn’s hyena shrieks on everyone deserve their own isolated aircraft. Other people, for example, have yet to comprehend that the conduct of electric walkways is similar to that of escalators. Not everyone wants to lounge on a step while waiting for a grandiose human invention to transport their static existence onto another floor. Thus it is widely accepted that stationary individuals keep right so that those in a hurry can smoothly make their way past them. And yet some people don’t seem to translate this knowledge into their use of electric walkways. Even though the physical exertion needed to take one step is minimal, they remain static, not only obstructing the right side of the walkway but the left as well.

Passengers foster the subtle chaos that we associate with airports themselves. And even though these nuisances grate on our nerves and only seem to heat up our impatience, if we look at it objectively, it does harbor its own unique and diverse experience. Airports are really just meeting grounds for all the human traits that usually permeate our world on a more diffuse level. Airports contain us humans and our quirks and faults splayed out. What’s not to love about that?