JJ Spotting
Your children or a friend go on vacation and you are asked to pick them up at the airport (heavy sigh). If you live by me then this airport is Chicago’s O’Hare International. It’s a little nerve wracking because around the airport everyone in a vehicle is trying to kill you…either accidentally or with a sincere attempt to make it look like an accident.
Some form of communication eventually reaches you that you should stop circling the drain and start searching for a face you recognize. Go too early and you get screamed at by a person in a yellow vest (angry person, vest straining). Go too late and the person you’re picking up has already called an Uber (angry person, icicled eyebrows).
Last night as I searched the faces of the travelers standing between 1D and 1E in Terminal 1at 8pm I saw a face I recognized. It was not the person I was there to pick up. It was a woman who I worked with at my aerospace defense job, let’s call her JJ. I immediately started beeping my horn and waving like a lunatic. This was a surprise to her.
At 8pm on a Thursday night after a long week of travel she probably just wanted to get home, not be harassed by some maniac in a speeding CR-V.
I should also mention that prior to leaving for the airport (with such a late pickup) I had already completed my full nighttime shutdown sequence: face washed, teeth brushed, hair up in a silk turban, contacts swapped for my “at home” glasses. I looked like someone in witness protection who had stopped trying.
My actual pickup target happened to be standing roughly 30 yards from where I’d spooked JJ. So as I stepped out of the vehicle, I saw her…running…toward me. Naturally, I started running toward her. You know that scene in old movies where two people who haven’t seen each other in ages run toward each other and they slow the whole thing down with sweeping music? That’s what I pictured. What people actually witnessed was more like two penguins waddling toward one another across the tundra of Terminal 1.
JJ hugged me, told me she missed me and laughed at the spectacle we were making.
It was magic.
Best airport pickup ever.
