Fight or Flight

If my plane crashes due to a California condor sucked into the jet engine or if I drink twenty-seven cups of airport cappuccino and my heart explodes, my luggage will stand as a time capsule of my neurosis. I’ve packed coat hangers but the wrong replacement shaving cartridges, an iron but no pillow. I’ve jammed sunglasses into one water bottle and cold coffee in another. So long as my shirts are clean and pleated, I apparently don’t care if I look like a hip yet sleep deprived Grizzly Adams.

With the majority of my hair being scraped off every day, I have to get inventive with the shaving methods I prefer. Last night at the store my preference was apparently Lady Gillette which regardless of their silky, nick free finish will not jam into my Norelco Mach Three. This means I will either be shaving my head with my nose hair trimmer, or carefully smoothing my scalp with a replacement blade pinched between a pair of tweezers. My phrase book doesn’t list useful phrases like “please gesture towards the hygiene section of you’re store--I’m a moron,” so I have no soon hopes of remedying this issue.

The actual preparation and process of traveling supersizes my average level crazy. I won’t sit with my back turned to my departure gate in case the flight attendants somehow Houdini the 747 out from under me. The urge to phone every I know is almost irrepressible. When I get on the plane I’ll hunch in my isle and row playing the sit-next-to-me/don’t-sit-next-to-me game with every person I see, which will determine the skill and vigor I put into my oh-god-our-elbows-are-touching game later on. At the very end I will shoulder my way through people to stand in front of an empty baggage claim for twenty minutes, keeping an eye of the geriatric in the wheelchair to make sure she doesn’t snatch my suitcase.

This doesn’t take into account the language barrier and my own ability to bluff it like I could in Europe. The little Korean I already know I picked up in Tae Kwon Do classes, which gives me the ability to both offer and receive spinning face kicks. All of my spin kicking abilities would not hire a taxi to my hotel, no matter how totally awesome my form. I also have the ability to mechanically count to ten while doing jumping jacks, which may aid in looking like the crazy prisoner when I get picked up for vagrancy. So even though I’m still in hunkered in the Boise airport sprawled across the flight gate like a failed protest, in some small way I’m crouched in a East Asian making toilet wine with catsup packets and nutrasweet.

It’s nine AM. I’m going to find a bar and see if I can split a drink with one of the pilots.