travel woes

January 4, 2008 at 5:59 pm (travel) ()

question for the day: why do people in crowded airport waiting areas feel so entitled to use a seat solely for their belongings?

i regularly patron four airports, and find this to be the case.

is it related to object love? sort of a my-Coach-bag-shall-not-touch-the-floor kind of thing?

is it an action that reinforces a space bubble? Americans, famous for their colonial pioneer spirit, tend to like their space. they can go to great lengths to identify ownership of space through other devices such as brands, fences, gated communities, and space bubbles that (to my jaundiced eye) appear bigger than in places where people actually have to get along together.

is it a power thing? (i was here first, so my briefcase and ken follett paperback stay put, dammit!)

or is it a variety of things, all of the above, or the stunning absence of community?

anyhoo, what’s coming across to me today is that people in these airports are communicating one big thing: they’re afraid of each other. it’s there, in the staking out of territories of naugahyde, and fences made of carryon luggage and half-consumed foodstuffs. it’s in the lack of eye contact, the absence of solicitousness one hopes is present at least for the elderly.

okay, so i’m writing this in what is shaping up to be a gigantic storm here in California.(CNN coverage of the storm) hopefully it will resolve by the time i have to try and get home on sunday.

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