Admitting my Weirdness

Over the next 15 months, we're probably going to be spending an inordinate amount of time in airports all over the world. This doesn't bother me as much as it should. I secretly love going to the airport. I don't necessarily enjoy the lining up or the security anal probes, but I love almost everything else. Being in an airport is like being in a dream-like place where reality doesn't exist. You can eat things you normally wouldn't eat ($6.00 ham sandwiches and cotton candy?), read trash you wouldn't normally read (hello, celebrity gossip rags), and buy ridiculousness that you would never buy otherwise, and it's all okay because you're at the airport. There's nothing better than a package of bite-sized individually wrapped chocolates or a two-litre bottle of duty-free liquor -- except maybe a package of miniature perfume bottles that you'll never use.

Really, though, the reason I love the airport is that it's the best place for people-watching. In departures, I like to make up trips that the passengers are going on -- exotic vacations? Trips to Disneyworld? Business trips? My favourite place ever, though, is the arrivals gate. It's always full of happy people -- people arriving at vacation destinations, people returning home after a long absence, and most happily, people who are being reunited with loved ones after a long time apart. You can see the joy and emotion on their faces as they rush towards each other: parents and children, grandchildren and grandparents, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, boyfriends and boyfriends. They can't reach each other fast enough, and when they embrace, you can feel that it's like their world is complete for the first time in a long time.

We live in a wonderful world that's so full of love, and the airport is one of the best places to realize this.