mari.stella

I very gratefully and ironically found this on the first day of 2010.  Grateful because it’s utterly hilarious and ironic because I had a humbling flight experience just yesterday.

After a hectic holiday, I arrived at the airport readier than ever to just get home. When I saw the words DELAYED blinking wildly on the departures screen, I’ll admit, I threw my own version of a tantrum: gesticulating at the monitors, texting every person I knew with strings of !!!!!!!!!!!!’s and :( :( :(’s and broadcasting my annoyance by tweeting passive agressive hashtags, (#Fthisshit). It was ultimately this behavior that that lead to the phone’s battery exhaustion and a violently imploding anger aneurism.

With no other outlet, I herded myself, her royal pissed-offness, over to Hudson News to stack up on mindless distractions. I was of course annoyed at my lack of choices. I’d already read EVERY one of the food and men’s publications, the gossip rags, emblazoned with collages of fleshy celebrity midriffs, made me feel like a girly perv, and the interior design mags made me feel horribly inadequate and pauperish. That narrowed my choices to nature and cars. WHATEVER I sighed and grabbed at the latest Smithsonian Magazine, (chosen exclusively for it’s clever cover, the words “Pride and Predation” written beneath an image of a noble, rugged looking male lion – apparently I have the same standards for animals as I do homosapians).

Slumping in a pleather chair overlooking the runway (where the MY PLANE STILL HADN’T LANDED YET!!!!!!), my eyes glazed over the lion story, interrupting it every 4 minutes as I obsessively checked the time. Just as I found myself wondering if an $8.00 weak cocktail would dull the insufferable pain, I felt a little tug on my boot.  Lowering my magazine, I saw a small blonde child. A small blonde child was now tugging on my boot and laughing at me. A vision of kicking this little kid flashed through my raging, exhausted, burnt out brain.

And then I saw he was holding a small figurine. He lifted up so I could see it was a plastic lion. And he held the figurine there in front of me, pointing with his other small hand at my magazine cover. “Lion…” he said, shaking the figure, “…lion!” he said pointing to the noble, rugged real-life version. And I smiled, then laughed a little and soon I was giggling right along with him. Suddenly, I had no idea I was waiting for a flight.

Eli was the name of my new 7 year old comrade and we spent the next 3 hours talking, laughing, observing completely unawares of the updates announcing further delays to our flight. We sat on the floor and read the magazine together, him listening and me translating the text for his 7 year old ears. When we bored of lions, Eli took it upon himself to explain to me the fantastical world of the runway, (“That machine” - pointing to a baggage truck - “is bringing the worker elves their food and tools!” “Worker elves?” “The ones that live in the plane!”).  At one point his mom offered us some saltines with peanut butter and we ate them with gusto, exhausted by our hours of rigorous curiousness.

By the end of those hours, I realized it had been years since I detached myself from the GO GO GOness I live my life by and recognized my (pathetic and bratty) reliance on uber convenience. It was New Year’s eve on 2010 and I re-discovered, there on the floor of Terminal D, the utter necessity of looking up and dwelling in the otherwise banal elements of normalness I rush by every day.

When it was finally time, I boarded the plane with some sadness that my time with Eli was over and resolved that in this next decade I will make time to appreciate plastic lions, bagagge trucks and saltines with peanut butter more often.

(Thanks to theessentialman for bringing my attention to the above clip)