Train table up and seatback in the full upright position

Okay, true story from a few weeks ago.*

(*Actually some of it might be, well, "embellished", but I mean, I promise I would never just lie. Sometimes everyday life just needs a little excitement added. A few well-chosen adjectives never killed anyone.)

I think I like sitting in the airport terminal just as much as I like flying. There's something kind of exhilarating about being somewhere where you're surrounded by strangers and no one quite knows who you are. You're another face in the crowd-- another passenger like them. You could be the ridiculous girl who is wearing sunglasses inside and four-inch heels while going towards baggage claim. You could be the dad with those three screaming kids who just spilled their carry-on snacks on the floor. You might even be the guy with his macbook, paying $24.94 for wireless internet just to entertain himself. I mean, people can see your outward appearance, but they can't discover YOU. Your personality, how you cry everytime you watch Bambi, the most played album in your music collection-- no one really learns that just by looking at you. Unfortunately, appearances aren't always all they're cracked up to be.

He was wearing a fedora. Not one of those oddly-colored ill-fitting ones that you see teenage girls sporting, but a real one. It was brown tweed and he looked like Frank Sinatra. I thought I might melt then and there. I've watched too many old movies, but I swear that a man with a blazer and a hat can do anything and girls will stick to him like velcro. He was sitting in the chair next to mine at Terminal E7 and I was slyly trying to keep looking his way while acting like I was skimming through a magazine. He reached for his bag and took out Nine Stories and I nearly screamed. This man with a hat that for some reason intrigued me was now reading one of my favorite books! It may be my overactive imagination but at that moment I imagined our whole life from his marriage proposal to me at that big tree in Animal Kingdom at DisneyWorld to us having wheelchair races together in the nursing home. I was subconsciously fixing my hair and trying to casually turn his way when it happened. His phone rang and he answered it. No, that's not the crisis- it's what's next. He opened his mouth and spoke.

"OMG no way! You've gotta be JK-ing with me! LOL! XOXO!"

My ears were crying. Not only did he use AIM abbreviations in real life, but he said them in such a way that made it seem like this was just a normal speech pattern. My daydream of DisneyWorld and old people suddenly vanished. How could this happen? He was supposed to be a dapper, suave, literary fellow who ordered champagne and spent summers at the Lourve. Instead, I was sharing my personal space with a twelve year old girl with too much caffeine and text messages. I wanted to say something to him, but the "convo" he was involved in seemed important, so I just said "g2g" with my body language and went to distract myself in the Hudson News stand.

So what did I learn today? Hats are deceiving. Srsly.