Airports

The airport is a place of many people and many emotions. As I sat there in the terminal today I watched as anxious people got off of the planes. Each person with a different look, some looked relieved, and others looked excited. A few people look morose, while others hit the jet-way running, hoping to catch the connecting flight. It is a place where raw emotion is up front and in your face. I few years ago A&E had a show on the followed various aspects of Southwest Airlines and the customers that they had to deal with. Of course it was a television reality show, so they went in and found the wildest footage and strangest people in the airport system. One episode I watched as a woman tried to board a plan with an imaginary friend, I think that in the end Security got involved in the situation. The show illustrated the real emotions in the airport good and bad. Today behind me in the gate area there was a couple sitting next to each other. They looked to be in their middle twenties, he had a ball cap on and a USMC tattoo down the inside left arm. I presume that he is in the Marines. The young woman was distressed about something. She sat next to him crying a little for 15-20 minutes. What was upsetting, were they leaving home, leaving each other, or was he leaving to go overseas? I do not know the answer to that question, nor will I ever know. For every sad moment that I see at an airport, there is always a happy moment. It could be a parent united with a child, or a child meeting his grandparent, or two lovers separated by a thousand miles making eye contact for the first time in months. Thus like the rolling hills of Oklahoma, an airport is full of emotional mountain tops, and valleys, all in the same building.