Cokeheads and bots

Cokeheads and bots. Those are the two titles I’ve decided to give the cast of characters for this trip.

I’m flying to Pittsburgh for a weekend event and got to TIA around 5:30am.

The type of folks one might encounter at this airport greatly depends on what time you arrive. I had a coffee and a slice of pumpkin bread and made my way to the shuttle where I met my first character.

He started a conversation by telling me that I looked exhausted, and asked why I looked so tired. Thanks, guy. “Life in general, man.” I said. He told me that he too was tired from 2 weekends of partying (It’s Friday morning…?) and that he was headed to another bachelor party in New York for a friend of his who is getting married next weekend. “Wow, you must be on vacation” I said. “Nah, man, partying is what I do”.
“Oh, wow. I could never do that” I retorted. A nice guy, I thought, but he’s clearly snorted something a little more potent than coffee. He must have counted my unwillingness to congratulate him on his choice to be a career partier as some kind of hint that the conversation was over, so he turned to the elderly lady who chose to sit alone in the back of the shuttle and told her his story. All of this within the 40 seconds or so it takes the sky rail to get to the E terminal from the main.

Exiting the shuttle into an immediate and unusually long security line I met the rest of my cast of characters. I’m including the cokehead in this group as well since he was 1 step behind me.

I’ve played a few video games, but not enough to call myself a gamer, and in most RPGs there are static characters who always stay in one place whether it be a tavern, a street corner, a church… You get the idea.  Those characters always ask the same question if you interact with them. Other characters will say things you are meant to overhear as clues to the plot or just to create a sense of realism saying things like “The weather looks strange today, watch out for dragons!” or “Did you hear? The maid at the old fox hotel was killed by a pack of rabid weasels last night! Be on the lookout for weasels!”

The people in the queue were all behaving like those static characters.

The cokehead struck up a conversation with a professional looking guy by saying “I hope it’s not like this in New York, I’ve gotta fly out of JFK on Monday”. The TSA girl who was directing traffic just kept repeating “This way, this way”, and as the line continued I passed by a man in a blazer who asked me for the time each time we passed. When I got to the scanner a TSA agent walked out from behind the xray machine saying “If you’ve got bling on your shorts I can’t help you” and stared at me blankly (I am wearing jeans). I gave a polite, if slightly terrified laugh. The professional looking fellow grew disinterested and the cokehead started a conversation with another stranger by repeating “I hope it’s not like this in New York, I’ve gotta fly out of JFK on Monday”. When I read this line back I read it in a New York accent, but he didn’t have one. Just imagine Gary Senise saying the lines for the cokehead.

I’m on the plane now and have the good fortune of sitting between to very quiet folks, so that’s nice. We’ll see what happens when I transfer in Memphis. If I’m lucky my day will continue to be surrounded by uncannily surreal video game characters.