I am sitting in the Sbarro at the Miami International Airport. With six hours to kill before my connecting flight, I’m wondering what to do. I begin to concentrate on the couple next to me playing rummy. The husband-I assume they are married-is frustrated because he is losing. “You pick up the whole pile and leave me with nothing to do,” he says to the woman I determine is his wife. She alternates between the glee of winning to embarassment when his frustration becomes audible and he begins to use profanity. I wonder how much his profanity and anger is kidding or whether it signals that their relationship has more tension than I am seeing. Because they are using playing cards with the Carnival logo on them, I decide that they are just getting back from a cruise. They must be going home, and I wonder where that might be. They don’t have distinctive accents or clothes that could help me figure out where they are from, so I give up trying to figure it out and move on to someone else.
Airports are the perfect location for people watching. After the card-playing couple, I found myself watching a black woman who was sitting by herself a few tables over. She was maybe in her early 30s, her long hair was attractively braided, and she was dressed professionally in a blue skirt suit. I think she worked for the airport, because she wore an ID card, but I couldn’t tell where in the airport hierarchy she fit. She had a full meal-salad, breadsticks and chicken parmesan, which seemed a little odd, considering it was 3:30 p.m. I started to concoct a theory about how she had been working all day on a double shift and was just now getting a break to eat a meal. Something about her made her seem like a hard worker who would do something like that. What’s odd is that I could make that assumption without seeing her at work or even hearing her talk. Just from her demure manner, wiping her mouth with her napkin after each bite, and eating efficiently-quickly enough not to waste time, but not snarfing it down in huge mouthfuls—made me think she was a good worker.
The best part of people watching at airports is getting a snippet of people’s lives, and with little to no context, inventing a whole story about them. From eavesdropping on businesspeoples’ conversations to watching the twentysomethings’ interactions with airline personnel, people show a little bit about who they are and leave the rest up to the imagination of people like me. Occasionally, someone will strike up a conversation with me and give me more insight into their actual personality and background, but more often than not, you can find me in the corner where I can watch whatever catches my fancy without being disturbed—and without looking really creepy as I stare at total strangers for long periods of time.
The common denominator of people in airports is that we are all traveling, but other than that, there’s no guarantee that we have any other shared characteristics. Airports are big mixing bowls, bringing together people who ordinarily might not encounter each other. Such was the case with the crowd of four people traveling together who were wearing Harley Davidson T-shirts. Their Southern accents and conversations about pick-up trucks gave them a small town quality, but by no means did they come across as backward hicks. They weren’t, however, the type of people I normally come across in my college world in Washington, D.C. The few people I know who own Harley Davidson shirts wear them more as jokes than as a source of pride in their motorcycle. But the group was still interesting to watch, if for nothing more than the cultural experience that is learning about somebody different.
I used to wonder if I was the only one who watched people in airports and tried to figure out their stories. I found it hard to believe that I could be, but I never heard anyone else talk about doing it. But on this last trip, I noticed a woman staring at me from across the airport lounge. I hoped she was making up a story about me. Sadly, I don’t think it would have been too difficult to figure out my ordinary story. I looked a little scruffy, having not shaven in several days, and was carrying a backpack that was obviously filled with clothes. I also carried a bag from the San Jose, Costa Rica airport gift shop. Any idiot could figure out that I was a college student returning from spring break in Central America. But maybe the story she created went further than that. I’ll never know because I was sitting too far away to talk to her and too busy trying to invent who she was.
Christopher Trott is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. In preparation for landing he reminds you to fasten your seatbelt and ensure that your tray tables and seat backs are in the upright and locked position.
