The Sights and Sounds of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport

October 22, 2007

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is a fun place to travel in and out of IF you are not in a hurry and can spend time people watching. On Thursday, Alison and I were casually walking to our gate heading to New Orleans to visit her family for a long weekend. We both noticed a very skinny man near the wall trying to sit on a metal briefcase - yes, you read that correctly. Clearly drunk (it is like 11 am on a Thursday morning) he falls off the briefcase and gets up and tries it again. He also is talking to passengers (mostly women) strolling by. Well, of course this man is on our plane, and even better, this man sits in the seat behind us. I got drunk just smelling him when he sat down. He proceeded to talk to the woman in the seat IN FRONT of us and they talked excitedly about going to the Atlanta/New Orleans football game and then they told passengers around them that they really did not like each other. At one point, the woman in front of us asked him: “Do you want any goldfish to eat?” He declined and sipped on his two Jack and Cokes he had ordered. We had a birthday girl (she was an older woman) on the plane and the attendant asked us all to applaud her. The passengers applauded and the drunk guy screamed in a slurred voice, “Give her a spankinnnn!” Nice.

But it was in Hartsfield-Jackson on the way back that I had to say to myself, “is nothing sacred anymore?” I was in the bathroom and in the stall next to me is a woman- clearly using the bathroom as well- talking on her cell phone. Really? Must we talk on our cell phones 24/7? Must we talk on our cellphones while peeing? I just don’t understand. She said, “Girl, I just called you to tell you not to worry about him. He does not know what he is missing and if he calls you, you just hang up on his ass. Wait, let me flush. Okay, you promise me you will hang up on his ass?”

Chatter on the toilet…