Introduction | Ashlie Meredith
I have an irrational fear of airports. If you have ever felt anxiety over taking a test, asking a girl out, or coming home to your parents after a fender bender in the parking lot, you know about one tenth of the agony I feel before embarking towards that hangar of hell. Mostly I'm afraid of missing my flight and being stuck in the airport for nine hours on Fourth of July weekend waiting to get on a standby seating list while 28 year-old ex-frat boys offer to buy me rum and cokes at the nearest sports bar. Of course I would oblige to their hospitality, get relatively drunk to relieve the stress, miss my name being called, and realize with absolute horror that I would not be getting out of Las Vegas in the immediate future. Not that this has ever happened before...
The worst part starts at the very beginning. Of course, I spend the whole night paranoid and sweating, packing and repacking each duffel bag. I make checklists for checklists and scratch them off over and over again until I have a completely black page--a mess of raw emotion, ink on paper, my finest works of art. Then, I surrender to the comfort of sleep just long enough to miss 2 of the 3 alarms I had set. My ride to the airport looks over in pity as I ask them to pull over so I can throw up the stress on that freeway that goes from Park City to Salt Lake. We are an hour behind schedule. Not that this has ever happened before...
I am afraid of security. Did I leave a lighter in my carry on? What will they say if I did? I scan my ticket over and over again for those little star hole punches they put on them for the random "extra screenings". What does that mean? Will they make me go in a special room, strip down, or worse yet... submit to a cavity search?! I hold my breath and step through the metal detector. There's a loud beeping--it is just my cell phone, put it through the x-ray, go back through, it's all O.K. I can finally exhale. Now its on to brave the newsstands, the pretzel kiosks, overpriced trinkets with the name of the city your flying out of, themed bars (gag), tiny awkward smoking rooms where everyone has to look at each other, anxious people glued to blue monitors, luggage everywhere, children everywhere, and the future worry of baggage carousels, it is a nightmarish three ring circus.
Then there's those awful chairs you wait in after going through security. Why do they have to be so close together? There's tons of room in those waiting rooms and is it really necessary to force me to feel the breath of a screaming baby, with breast milk dripping from its toothless mouth, on my face? But finally, I'm on the plane and I can settle in and hear the familiar speech about what to do should the pilot prove incompetent or the weather unfortunate. I know these by heart. I am not worried in the least about a plane crash. I smile sit back and read Catcher in the Rye like I have done on every flight since I was 14.
The worst part starts at the very beginning. Of course, I spend the whole night paranoid and sweating, packing and repacking each duffel bag. I make checklists for checklists and scratch them off over and over again until I have a completely black page--a mess of raw emotion, ink on paper, my finest works of art. Then, I surrender to the comfort of sleep just long enough to miss 2 of the 3 alarms I had set. My ride to the airport looks over in pity as I ask them to pull over so I can throw up the stress on that freeway that goes from Park City to Salt Lake. We are an hour behind schedule. Not that this has ever happened before...
I am afraid of security. Did I leave a lighter in my carry on? What will they say if I did? I scan my ticket over and over again for those little star hole punches they put on them for the random "extra screenings". What does that mean? Will they make me go in a special room, strip down, or worse yet... submit to a cavity search?! I hold my breath and step through the metal detector. There's a loud beeping--it is just my cell phone, put it through the x-ray, go back through, it's all O.K. I can finally exhale. Now its on to brave the newsstands, the pretzel kiosks, overpriced trinkets with the name of the city your flying out of, themed bars (gag), tiny awkward smoking rooms where everyone has to look at each other, anxious people glued to blue monitors, luggage everywhere, children everywhere, and the future worry of baggage carousels, it is a nightmarish three ring circus.
Then there's those awful chairs you wait in after going through security. Why do they have to be so close together? There's tons of room in those waiting rooms and is it really necessary to force me to feel the breath of a screaming baby, with breast milk dripping from its toothless mouth, on my face? But finally, I'm on the plane and I can settle in and hear the familiar speech about what to do should the pilot prove incompetent or the weather unfortunate. I know these by heart. I am not worried in the least about a plane crash. I smile sit back and read Catcher in the Rye like I have done on every flight since I was 14.
Labels: airports, ashlie meredith, fear, interesting thing, introduction
posted by ASHLIE MEREDITH | 9:52 AM
1 Comments:
I share the opposite fear - I am afraid of flying! :-) Airports don't scare me that much, granted they are a daunting task, but they don't worry me as much as actually stepping ON an airplane. Which is why I haven't flown in over 15 years.
Oh, and by the way, loved your story!! I loved how you described the screaming baby. Great stuff!
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