The Height of "Are You For Real?"

What is it about traveling that turns even the most hardcore pessimists into even worse cynics? Didn’t see that one coming did you? Fine, or that turns optimists into pessimists?

In my case, I’m not the latter, so…

I’m a pessimist by nature, I believe. I have the worst luck on the planet, which I very recently learned I inherited from my father, who has the second worst luck on the planet. I took a brief foray into optimism a few short months ago but, in the end, I just find naysaying so much more exhilarating. What is so exciting about making lemonade out of lemons anyway? Why not just suck on the damn lemon until the glands in the back of your throat convulse from the acidity and you remember you’re alive?

Okay, focus … back to traveling. In my every day life, people annoy me. Now, throw me into a tin can with hundreds of them and it’s what I like to think hell would be like. My own personal hell. I’m not one of those people who like to make small talk with the stranger sitting on my right who, after the flight, I will never see or speak to again.

For that matter I don’t like talking to people in or around an airport, period.

I become a loner. An observer. And as much as the conversations around me make me cringe, a listener. There is always the spoiled university student whose daddy pays for everything: “Guess what my dad gave me for Christmas… he paid my credit card! I still want something for under the tree though, so I said I want a New Years dress, iPod speakers…the world on a silver platter….” Then there is the group of it’s-five-o’clock-somewhere university students out on a Spring Break-esque trip “Oh. My. God. When we get there, LET’S DO SHOTS!” What I notice about both of these is 1. The uncomfortably high volume in which they speak so that everyone around them can have the “privilege” of hearing and 2. They make me hate people even more.

Then there is the tall, broad-shouldered, I-spend-three-hours-a-day-in-the-gym-and-I’m-in-love-with-myself white/Latino. As I walk by, I notice, I mean he does look good, but right as we pass each other, he makes eye contact and gives me a come-hither, you-know-you-want-this smile. My reaction: I roll my eyes. Just in time so he can see.

And there is, of course, always the adorable, sweet old couple who tries to make conversation and you just really feel too damn rude to ignore. I’ll give them a pass because they are old, hoping that one day, someone will do the same for me.

On this last trip I took to Costa Rica, I was particularly not in the mood for conversation after just saying goodbye to my boyfriend … again. I was waiting in line for check in and, as if my signals could not be anymore obvious, a 40-something white American male behind me says “Sad to leave?” “Mhmm,” I reply, without looking at him.

Note for the socially clueless: No eye contact = No desire to have a conversation with you.

“How long were you here,” he prods.

“Not all that long.” I turn my back to him.

“I was here for 3 weeks. I come every few months or so.”

“Mmm.”

“It’s a beautiful country, you really should come and stay longer. I always spend my time in Jaco, maybe a few days in San Jose.”

I think to myself: Jaco is the worst beach to spend 3 weeks at and you couldn’t visit an uglier Costa Rican city than San Jose.

“Was this your first time here,” he continues, clueless.

“No, I lived here for two and a half years.”

Silence. That will shut him up, I thought.

“Oh, why were you here? For work?”

Ugh! Seriously dude. I’m not looking at you. I’m answering with short, first-grade sentences. I turn my back to you after every comment. How are you still talking to me? And as my luck would have it, I had another 30-40 minute wait in line with Mister chatter-box behind me. When it was my turn at the counter, I walked off as fast as possible, not looking back, while at the same time praying that for once in my life I’d have good luck and he wouldn’t sit next to me.

Be careful what you wish for.

God answered my prayer that day; he didn’t sit next to me. Instead I got a 300+ pound, 6+ foot, 40+ something Latino who, due to the size of his shoulders, forced me to fold myself uncomfortably into the nook in between my seat and the window, hoping for a fast flight.

It felt like an eternity.

There are of course the moments that make me smile a little too, although they always seem to be overwhelmed by the bad about flying. This trip, for example, the good came in knowing I didn’t have to convince an immigration official that my green card was, in fact, real and that I didn’t pay for a fake one. I didn’t have to scan my fingerprints and stare into the tiny camera as they captured my face. I didn’t have to answer questions about why I was out of the country for so long, or when I planned to leave again. In fact, this time, immigration hit on me. Twice. Once entering into Costa Rica and again arriving back in America.

And now my new, shiny American passport has its first stamps, stamps that I would willingly put myself through hell again to obtain.