140Story - Day 48

  I'm writing a story 140 words at a time and posting the results here daily.  Can I sustain interest?  Will I lose the narrative thread?  Find out in this next installment of Bullets Ain't Cheap

‘Rdy 2 tlk? Rply 1 ltr. -M’
    Kelly gave me a hard stare.  If I were him I’d have been suspicious too.
    “I think it’s from Michaels,” I offered, holding out the phone to him.
    “We need his help,” Kelly replied, more to himself than to me.  “Reply with a ‘Y.’”
    I did.
    Nothing happened, though I thought something would.  Even Kelly looked around, as if he were expecting someone to emerge immediately from the shadows.
    When the phone beeped again, it startled me so much I nearly dropped it.
    ‘S on Shoreline.  L at second light.’
    Kelly craned his neck to see.  “This street is Shoreline.  Don’t tell me that bastard already knows exactly where we are.”
    “That’s why he makes the big bucks,” I said as I pointed the car South.
    At the second light I took a

There's Just The One

I have a theory. Well, it's more than a theory, it's more like a lead-pipe cinch to be fact. I just don't have a valid way of testing it. Yet. But it's one of those things that when you hear it you just know it has to be true.
   A bit of explanation. In one of my prior jobs I used to travel a lot. All over the continental US and then to various foreign parts of the world. So I lived out of suitcases and ate in strange restaurants and lurked in funny-smelling comic books shops in cities and towns and villages far from my home. I also spent a lot of time in airports and had a chance to see where they're different and where they're the same. And they're all pretty much the same, no matter if you're in Honolulu, Savannah, Frankfurt or Fukoka. This is where my theory comes in.
   I'm convinced that there is only one airport. Just one. Everyone all over the world uses the exact same airport no matter where they are. It's just that the airport looks different depending on which door you use to enter it. And you can't see the millions of other people using the One True Airport, only the ones who came in the same door as you.
   It's a multi-verse kind of thing, with a touch of experientialist solipsism thrown in. When you go into the airport in LaGuardia you have to traverse a certain path, travel certain roads to get there. And that path determines what the One True Airport looks like to you when you enter it. Same thing when you go to the airport in Adelaide, Australia, you have to work your way through the local environment to get there. It's kind of like solving the maze on the back of child's placemat in a restaurant; locally there's only way way to get to the One True Airport, and that one way determines how you see everything inside. So when you go to the Leonardo DaVinci Airport outside Rome all the signs look like they're in Italian. But when you go to Gatwick all the signs - which are the exact same signs - read in the Queen's English.
   That TGIF Friday's in DFW? It's the same one in McCarran. Exact same one. The burrito places are the same, the newsstands are the same, even the shoeshine stands are the exact same in each and every airport you're ever going to visit. The details just look different to you.
   You ever wonder why the janitor cleaning the bathroom in O'Hare looks just like the janitor cleaning the bathroom in Brussels? Because they're the exact same guy. It's true.
   Yeah, it's a brain-twister. But anyone who's traveled for a living knows what I'm talking about and they're with me. They get it. Now, if I can just figure out a way to prove myself right...

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned every time I have to use an airplane's bathroom. I don't mean the bathroom in the airport terminal, I mean the one that's actually on the plane itself, either the one in front or the one in back. Or the bathrooms in the middle if you're flying one of those great big jets to another country.
   These bathrooms don't worry me because of the smell – though that is troubling – or the fact that so many passengers use them and you really, really don't know where these people have been. It's not the embarrassing, huge whoosh they make when you flush them. It's not even that I'm afraid that when I flush I might get sucked into the blue-water reservoir.
   I am concerned, however, that when I flush I might actually get stuck.
   How embarrassing would that be? I picture myself bent in two like a snapped toothpick, my feet pointed at the ceiling, my arms pressed tight against them, my lower half wedged firmly in the bowl. Remember that my pants would be around my ankles, which, once I get stuck in the toilet, would be above my head.
   I'd have to call out for help, but I wouldn't want to do it in a panicked way, because that would just be pathetic. I'd have to say something like 'Uh… excuse me? I seem to have run into a bit of a snag here…' or give it a little laugh, rap my shoe against the door and say 'You're not going to believe what just happened…'
   One of the flight attendants would have to investigate and once they see the situation I've gotten myself into they'd have to call the pilot over for a consult. The both of them would stand there, hands to their chins, a puzzled look on their faces as they say 'Never seen that happen before…' I just don't need the grief.
   That's why I hold it until we land and then run for the real bathroom in the terminal.

Travel Games

I was flying from Texas to California yesterday, and as luck would have it I saw someone I knew in the airport. This happens to me more often than you would think it might, it happened just this past December, as a matter of fact. It's only really freaky when it happens in a foreign country, where you would have no right to expect to meet someone from, say, your high school.
   Anyway, I saw a lady I knew when I worked at Countrywide. She had A23 boarding number, I had A22. Which was eerily similar to the events of December, when the friend I met by chance in DFW not only was on the same plane as I was, but had the seat right next to me. The lady from Countrywide worked in HR like I did, her office was on the other side of the big room from mine. Come to find out, she's from San Antonio too, I never knew this before. I ran into her at McCarran airport - that's Vegas for you non-travel savvy folks - but she'd been on my same flight from San Antonio. Weird.
   We got to talking and I realized there's a game people play when you meet someone you don't really know all that well, but you feel obligated to make conversation because you recognize them from work. You talk about people you both know and where they are now. Mark? Don't know, still looking I imagine. Jeff? Started a business. Other Jeff? Working a consulting gig. Nathan? Working his family's pharmacy. Eve? Working for Scott - remember him? - but recently laid off and looking for work too.
   Big pause.
   What do you say when you realize you've run out of meaningless pleasantries? When you've exhausted the list of people you both might know but you still feel obligated to keep the conversational ball rolling? You talk about your shared hometown. Did you know they have music at Wonderland Mall, which hasn't been Wonderland for years but neither of us could remember it was called Crossroads Mall until much later in the conversation. You talk about what high schools you went to, and where my father went but didn't graduate from, and things that didn't used to be there and where farms once dotted a landscape now filled with ugly McMansions.
   Big pause.
   Then the boarding announcement sounded and we shuffled on board for our 3 ounce plastic cup of soda and two packets of peanuts.
   It was an awkward dance, though pleasant enough. I found out she lives in South Pasadena, as do Other Jeff and Sandra. Never knew that before either. Small world.

Aw Man... Still?

Jeez... just when I think things are getting better I go out in public.
   So I had to go to the post office today - queries for a kick-ass children's alphabet book - and on the way back it happened to be lunch time. I was feeling a bit peckish so I stopped into a Baja Fresh. It was early and there weren't many people inside, only one person in front of me, a young black man. He didn't look like he was shaving yet, he was carrying a book bag, and he was wearing shorts, so using my Batman-like detective skill I deduced he was probably a high school student.
   The kid orders then pays with a $20 bill, which the clerk gives the once over something fierce, even puts it under the ultra-violet counterfeit detector machine. It's the first I've seen one of these things outside of Vegas, so I figure the place must have a problem with fake money, seeing as how the Miracle Mile is a few miracle miles away from a rough neighborhood.
   It's my turn, so I order and I also pay with a $20 bill. I'm all set to watch the process up-close, maybe even engage her in conversation about it. She shoves the $20 into the drawer and hands me my change.
   I was astonished. Gob-smacked. I didn't think this kind of thing happened still in the USA. The clerk makes double-sure the money the black kid gives her isn't counterfeit, but trusts the white guy is on the up-and-up. I felt like telling her that while young people steal, old people commit fraud. Like counterfeiting. If anybody should be profiled for passing fake bills, it should be the middle-aged white dude dressed like he works in an office.
   I don't know if the kid noticed, though it would have been hard not to. Hell of a thing to have to put up with in 21st Century America. Dammit.


COMMUTE - there - 33 minutes      back - 38 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 20-something days, I'm losing track...

More Travel Notes

I spent 10 hours in transit yesterday - DFW and snow never mix well - and I'm trying not to be resentful of the delays and inconvenience. It's a miracle of modern technology that I can be annoyed when it takes me 10 hours to get from Texas to California when it normally takes about 5 hours. Just hours to cross 1,300 miles is a privilege I kind of take for granted, honestly. If I had been traveling 70 years ago, 5 hours would have gotten me about 100 miles West of San Antonio. Maybe. So I count myself lucky I can make the trip as quickly as it happens now.
   But still...
   Some random stuff I noticed during my sojurn yesterday. My lengthy sojurn... see? I just can't let it go.

Extra classy- I saw a fat redneck wearing knee-length camo shorts (yes, while it was snowing outside) but the best part was the 'F' and the 'U' tattooed prominently on each of his meaty calves. I bet that brings the ladies a-runnin'.

When you haven't eaten in five hours the smell of the onion rings from the TGI Fridays by gate C29 in DFW is almost enough to make you want to kill for a taste. Then you realize that it's TGI Fridays and you get over it.

More red sneakers. I mentioned before that I saw more red shoes at the airport than I ever had and the trend continued this time. One pair in San Antonio, one pair in DFW. I swear, I never see them anywhere else.

Standing side-by-side: a guy with the biggest head I've ever seen and a guy with the smallest head I've ever seen. These were not deformities or abnormalities, these were just regular guys, one with a noggin the size of a jack-o-lantern and one with a head the size of canteloupe. As far as I could tell they did not know each other, but they would have made a great comedy duo. Big-head and Tiny.

When you wash your hands with yellowish antiseptic soap they end up smelling like Band-Aids. It took me a little while to figure out why I imagined I was back in the infirmary getting stitched up after wrecking my 3-speed on the elementary school parking lot.

In a truly odd travel-related coincidence, I saw a friend of mine in DFW. Turns out she was on the same flight as I was back to Burbank. But I have unexpectedly encountered people I know in airports before, it happens. The really freaky part is she was in the seat right next to me. Really.

And That's How Swine Flu Spreads

I'm back in Texas for the holidays, time for fajitas and barbeque and maybe a gun show or two. Usually airports are good places for people watching, but I was scheduled pretty tightly, no time to chit chat or dilly dally or any other slightly effeminate verbs like those two. But along the way something interesting did happen.
   I drank a Pepsi from England.
   No, I didn't buy it in a novelty British food store, a passing chimney sweep did not hand it to me, I didn't pick it off the corpse of an international spy. On the flight from Burbank to Dallas, the flight attendant served it to me right out of the drink cart. This was a Pepsi can bottled in England, with a contest paid in pounds sterling advertised along the top rim. Straight from the Empire.
   Remember, I got on the plane in Burbank, and so did the Pepsi can. And Burbank is eight time zones removed from England. So the can had to travel all that way, probably in the drink cart of an airplane taking off from Heathrow, making several stops along the way at JFK or O'Hare or Hartsfield, until finally it found its way to that one drink cart in Burbank, where it started making the trip back East. How many hands did it go through? How many flight attendants or airport catering dudes handled it? How many miles did it actually travel before I drank yet another soda I didn't need to be drinking?
   I think the risk posed by swine flu has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion, far too alarmist, but when I get a drink bottled in England on my trip from Burbank to Dallas, I can see the point of raising the issue. People travel across the globe on a whim these days - apparently so do Pepsi cans - which means their germs travel too.
   Speaking of germs, I have a bit of a cold myself, so I think it would be interesting to see who on that plane catches my cold. I'm hoping I infected the douchebag in front of me who leaned his seat all the way back, I know I tried my darndest to give it to him. Maybe, just maybe, my cold will travel all the way back to England, infecting the staff working in the bottling plant that made the Pepsi I drank. That would be cool, huh? Talk about closing the loop.

You Ever Wonder...?

I've been pondering imponderables again, I have the free time for it. Here are a few.

What did ancient Egyptians use for a nasal decongestant? Did the subject even come up for them? I assume they got colds - they for sure got various plagues - but since they lived in the desert along the Nile I'm not sure they got stuffed up. Maybe King Tut just lived with sinus headache.
   For that matter, what did they do for toilet paper? They had papyrus, but that was for important stuff like government documents, not for wiping. I'm assuming.

If you could read someone's mind, would you really want to? I have trouble going into someone else's bathroom, can you imagine treading through the cesspool of someone else's thoughts? There's some dark, disturbing stuff rolling through my head, but I'm pretty sure it's tame compared to what you're thinking about. Mind reading would be a punishment, not a gift.

Why is being brutally honest when you're a little kid cute and precocious, and doing the same thing when you're really old is curmudgeonly and endearing, but being brutally honest at the ages in between is frowned upon? Why do kids and old people get a pass but I get a whispered admonition to 'be nice?' If I want to tell someone he's dressed like a colorblind clown I can't do it, but if some kid tells me I need to shave it's charming. If I open my mouth in a boring meeting and ask why we're there I get a talking-to from my boss, but if an old lady in line tells me to speed it up everybody chuckles. It ain't fair.

How can people not like dogs? I can certainly understand if someone doesn't like cats, if you die alone in the house with them they'll eat your eyeballs, no loyalty at all. I can also understand not liking birds, lizards, hamsters, what have you. But dogs are special. We grew up with dogs, literally, our evolution and theirs are tied together, they need us and we need them. So what kind of degenerate could not like dogs? Communists, that's who. Lousy fifth-columnists as Red as a baboon's ass. That's right, I said it: if you don't like dogs you're a devotee of a discredited socio-political economic philosophy. What are you gonna do about it?

I understand intellectually how airplanes fly, it's a very simple equation. But it still seems like magic to me. How can a 600,000 pound machine stay in the air? It seems like a violation of natural laws for anything that big to be off the ground, let alone carrying people across the globe. Like seeing an elephant swim, your eyes are telling you it's happening but your brain is screaming at you that it can't possibly be. So cut it out already, it makes me uncomfortable.

Return From Vacation

I know, 'vacation from what, deadbeat?' Anyway, I'm back. I'll post regular stuff tomorrow, but here are some short bits from my - extended - time lounging around DFW.

The mullet is not dead! Dee Snider can stop turning over in his grave. If he's dead. Which I don't think he is. I saw three mullets, though at first I thought it was four, but the first guy just changed his shirt. Really, I recognized the cap.
   A long, curly mullet under a camo cap, a Lesbian mullet on one of the ground crew seen from the airplane window, and a little kid mullet on some seven-year-old who obviously didn't know better.
   Long live the mullet!

A surprising number of people wear red sneakers. And by 'surprising' I mean any number other than zero. I thought Garrison Keillor was the only one, but I saw four different people wearing them.
   Perhaps it was the same pair of red sneakers, and these four people just switched them out when I wasn't looking?

Lots of people wave expansively across the airport terminal, but they seldom catch the eye of the person they're waving at. They end up walking over anyway, close enough to yell out the other person's name.

Some people shouldn't run in public.
   Some people definitely shouldn't run in public.
   Also, the half-run half-walk thing makes you look silly. Just say no.

En Vacacion

I'm spending a few days in Texas, so I won't be posting regularly until next week. Here are some travel thoughts, though.

Should a grown man wear a long-sleeved shirt, a blazer, and very, very ugly shorts? In DFW airport?

Is it allowed for a 17-year-old kid who never knew NWA to wear an 'Eazy Duz It' t-shirt?

Why is nothing in any airport restaurant/kiosk/food place good for you? Not that I'm complaining, I just want to know.

Could I just once get an in-flight magazine where the crossword puzzle isn't already filled in?