3 min. Monologo

Going to the airport is always fun. Traveling, flying on airplanes, exploring, getting detained by security… always fun. Normally people get detained for their racial profile, fewer others for their babyfaces. How old are you? Where are your parents? Can I see an ID? All these questions one after the other without giving you a chance to answer back. The attendant then sees your passport. He lets you move forward, with an awed face as he wonders, that just maybe, if he had gone to that pilates class this morning he would have fewer wrinkles in his face and look as young as you do now.

You are excited because you are a step closer to jumping on that plane toward your final destination. But then, you stumble with a line full of sad people. All of them moving in unison toward the security scan, as if they were all being admitted to prison. Even the savvy workers there look like they are having a blast. You can clearly tell by their faces that they take their job of saving the world very seriously. They even let mothers pass through security checks without asking them to take their flip-flops off. And every child knows how dangerous they can really be with just one swing; they could annihilate the whole plane with just one flick of the wrist.

After standing up for hours of procedures, you finally get to walk to your gate. A place where you know a multitude of different seating options will be waiting for you. But instead, you step to your gate to find yourself in a space crowder than the streets of New York. You have to decide between the chair next to the fat lady eating a herring sandwich or a teenage boy that apparently is trying to go through puberty without the use of a deodorant.

You take the wise decision to sit on the carpeted floor, that even though, is harder than the plastic chairs without cushions, you get the privacy you deserve. Now you can lay down, stretch your legs, and watch that reality show you’ve been thinking all day without people peeking at your screen.

After waiting a couple of minutes that for you seems to be hours later, you get to go on the plane and settle down. Then the stewardess comes out to do their usual Emergency Equipment Show. Here they show you necessary information like how to use a seatbelt. Just in case you’ve been driving a horse carriage for the last couple of years. Then they proceed to show you where the exits are located with a choreographed dance that hardly points anything specific, but the whole plane. If the plane goes down, I guess the only way to go is running toward a window and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work, then blame the stewardess who just pointed to her sides.

Shirley Solano
s.solanolarrauri@gmail.com