The Airport Misanthropist

By Rupert Pupkin

Regional airports and airlines have a strange effect on a traveller; they render him far more intolerant of people than he might be if he were on a lonesome mountaintop hungry for a little company.

It would be nice to stroll the airport concourse with a full and thankful heart, thinking only the best of people, sowing love and understanding in the smoking room, where butts smoulder in the spit-laden soup of the ashtray. It would be great to be a paragon of patience and serenity in the frantic aisles of Duty Free.

But a traveller, even one raised as a secular humanist, finds himself frothy with contempt for fellow passengers. No one, save the pretty girl in the velour sweatpants with the word Juicy stitched on her bottom, escapes the traveler’s scorn.

Try as one might to be a channel of love, the traveller finds it exceedingly difficult to bear the society of others along the broad airport corridors and the too-tight aircraft confines. His aversion to lines, sometimes referred to as queues (as if a fancy word could disguise their terror) is equal only to his loathing of those souls who manage to weaponise their voices when they speak into cell phones.

On an autumn day when the sky is blue, boarding pass tucked neatly in an embossed leather-like passport, our traveller has his foot run over by a cart and watches as his better nature flies out the giant window at Gate 64.

When two handsome ladies, brandishing new iPhones and luxury carry-on bags, form a blockade on the moving walkway, slowing the traveller’s advance to the men’s room, the transformation is complete: he has become an airport misanthropist. And when he hears a group of middle-aged men conversing at a volume that might be appropriate if they were hailing each other from distant villages, his imagination turns murderous. 

If something awful should happen to the little boy, the one who is kicking his mother’s shins as she hands their travel documents to the customs official, a traveller would not be too upset. He tries telling himself that the little boy is just being a typical child. But such an easy-going notion is quickly overridden by a stronger inclination, and when the little fellow trips and cracks his little head on the marble floor, the traveller narrowly resists the temptation to clap.

Infrequent and first-time travellers present the greatest challenge to a one’s sense of equanimity. Once onboard the aircraft, in their nervous excitement at manned flight, newcomers to aviation show an astonishing inability to sort out their luggage in the overhead compartment. In the after-meal rush for the lavatory, they continue to throw their weight against the restroom door (despite its obvious occupation), never quite mastering the inward folding panels or the simple lock. When they leap from their seats the moment the plane alights, after being instructed not to do so in seven languages, a traveller can’t be blamed hoping they are sucked out of a torn-away bulkhead.

All humans have odours, and in preparation for being on an enclosed airplane (as opposed to a crop duster), a seasoned traveller will bathe and brush and otherwise endeavour to make himself a pleasant seat companion. We have certain obligations as social beings, simple grooming duties that, strung together, make close proximity to others bearable. So, if a passenger neglects his hygiene, a seat companion cannot be faulted for taking an imaginary bat to his head.

Theoretically, we tolerate all our brothers and sisters in the friendly skies, even those who eat like pigs or feel compelled to kick the back of the traveller’s seat. But in reality, our mercy is only truly evident when it comes to the girl in the Juicy sweatpants. Unlike the frenzied members of a state-sponsored tour group, or the overbearing businessperson who dominates the armrest, the girl in the Juicy sweatpants is singularly tolerable. Please let us be seated together forever.