My mother, brother, and I walked into Pho20, a Vietnamese restaurant in Beaver Creek, Colorado, to find my dad already at a table by himself tearing apart some Asian wings.
“Mackenzie, I have a story idea for you,” he said, sauce dribbling down the side of his chin. “I already have a title – it’s ‘First Class Hookup.’”
“’First Class Hookup,’ Dad?” I questioned it immediately as we took our seats, but he insisted it was a serious piece that would require extensive research.
He went on to explain this brilliant idea, originally inspired while seated in the First Class Lounge earlier in the day: “During a flight delay – sometimes hours at a time – you have to think, these people need entertainment. They get bored. A lot of them are lone travelers, businessmen, and, hey, there are showers in the First Class lounge. I bet people hook up in the showers all the time! You should do a piece about the airport hookups – the First Class hookups.”
My brother and I argued that it wasn’t limited to first class. People could hookup in the airport no matter where their funds seat them. After all, the Mile-High Club is easily accessible to all travelers. But after enduring extreme flight delays of my own the day before (i.e. the Denver airport closed down so my plane landed in New Mexico instead) I was mostly focused on the bigger idea of how airports bring people together. The togetherness I witnessed did not come solely for those in the First Class lounge or in the form of sexual relationships. The togetherness applied to everyone.
After hours spent moseying around the New Mexico airport, waiting for news on our flight, the passengers on the United Airlines Flight to Denver became like a family – the UAFD Fam. Every time I stood in line for food, browsed a shelf in the Hudson News store, or brushed my teeth in the airport bathroom sink, I would end up in a conversation with someone of the UAFD Fam. We were all in the same boat, unsure of where our luggage would go, let alone where we would go, and the situation inspired an unspoken brotherhood between us.
A bunch of people on the way to Colorado Springs got together to rent a car and risk the snow storm. I helped an elderly couple named Robin and Rudiger buy plane tickets to their ultimate destination, Santa Barbara, and listened to their stories about being Hopkins doctors and making their sons wear ski boots on the airplane. They invited me to visit their farm in Baltimore. A boy and a girl struck up a conversation and realized they were both ultimately headed to Bozeman, Montana (wherever that is) so they decided to rent a car together for the drive. I hoped this would be the start of some wildly romantic love story, but I will probably never know.
Strangers invited me to join them for meals, strangers invited each other to join them for meals, and everyone took this opportunity to get a window into the life of the person beside them. These windows are actually easily accessible wherever you are in the world. On the train, on the street, on line at Chipotle, we are constantly surrounded by strangers who have millions of memories and stories – just as many as we do – but we never have a reason to turn to our right and ask, Hey, what’s your story? As much as it sucks to sit around waiting in airports, the extra time brings us the opportunity to meet someone new; to talk to someone who we otherwise may not have even said hi to.
Whether it be small talk about work or a full road trip to Montana, a short lunch over meatball subs or a quick fuck in the First Class Lounge bathroom, these connections provided momentary inclusion into the life of a stranger. We of the UAFD Fam were ultimately all flown out of New Mexico and our relationships whittled down to slight waves goodbye at the baggage claim, but we’ll always remember those few stranded hours when the downfalls of the weather led us to open the books of a hundred lives.
