while pretending not to stare

I had the opportunity to people watch for nearly four hours in a boring midwestern airport this weekend. As I sat there, pretending to type on my computer a very important blog post about the state of humanity, I watched people of all shapes and sizes stroll, waddle, bulldoze and sprint past me.

People watching as a sport is quite interesting. I looked for stereotypical sights (fat man and a skinny wife, tall white man and a pint-size asian wife, the sports fan family, and the high powered business woman in really ridiculous heels for the purpose of walking around the airport ). Don't lie. You know you've self-remarked about them all before.

They were all there, some in abundance.

Yet, after about an hour of pretending not to watch people walk past my little perch, I began to look more at the people who were sharing my little space. The lady who set up her computer and began pecking furiously as if she had a deadline for the NYTimes in thirty minutes. The couples who peered at the table next to mine and kept passing it by because it was filthy. The young pilots and flight attendant who flirted with each other relentlessly while awaiting the arrival of our plane.

The universal audience then began to turn its head on me. Who was people watching me while I was people watching them? I wondered what someone thought of me with my headphoned ears and random keyboard jotting and endless staring. I couldn't help but wonder if someone was writing my story while I was simultaneously writing theirs. The prospect, however unlikely, was thrilling. They certainly wouldn't have put me in a hotel conference all weekend, barely seeing the sunshine. They wouldn't have put me in the midst of an existential crisis with little hope in sight, but on the finished, triumphant end.

Did I like their hypothetical fictional version of me more than I liked the actual version of me? Did I find that person more interesting, more intriguing, more attractive, more everything than what is truthfully found in my person? The truth is that the answer was doubly yes.

With the validity of my existential crisis reconfirmed in my table-turned people-watching experience, I am hopeful for a productive week.