Airports: they bring out neuroses
Aug. 24th, 2011 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danchekkerSo I have this kinda weird fantasy involving airports. In it, for some reason there is doubt that I am who I say I am, and I am taken back to a back room where people ask me complicated questions about things the real Danchekker ought to know, and ask for names of references that they can go and find RIGHT NOW and check with that I am not actually a terrorist. I’m not actually found to be a terrorist, they let me go and apologize for the inconvenienct and say all my references do really think I’m a good person and I’ve probably missed my flight but that’s okay, they’ll put me up in a hotel for the night.
I did warn you it was weird.
Part of it is that here is an unbiased third party assuring me that yes, my friends do actually like me, even when I’m not there. But part of it is the questions themselves, and that boils down to feeling special because someone actually cares to ask and cares what the answers. And there’s a reason for me to tell people things I’ve done and thought, which usually I have a hard time convincing myself of. And maybe also because it’s a test, and I get a pretty cool adrenaline rush from tests.
The thing is, I actually had a similar experience to this, when I lost my purse complete with all my credit cards, and had to answer approximately 500 security questions to cancel them and have new ones mailed to me.. It was an awful stressful situation that I think I still haven’t fully processed. But I did like having all the questions asked of me. So conclusion: I am really weird, but I know myself. Good?
Neurosis number two: I am always quite pleasant to people in airports and on planes. Everyone is really stressed and unhappy and generally unpleasant in these situations, but I smile a lot and actually START conversations. With LIGHT JOKES. This is pretty much opposite of my general behavior with strangers. It isn’t because I like flying. I stopped liking it about the age of 18, and now I hate the stress and the cramped space and the dry air and I always end up feeling juuuust slightly nauseous. But I’m smiling, and meaning it, chiefly because I am contrary. When I am alone or in lab I generally feel a mostly happy even keel, but when I’m with other people I usually feel the opposite of what I ought to. It’s the same reason I always walk at the front of a group, even if that means walking faster than I’d walk alone, and often don’t enjoy my vacations. I’ve tried to fight this tendency, with mixed success. Conclusion: sit next to me on an airplane?
Final travel related thought: as I rode the shuttle to the airport, I felt a great sense of relief, and compared it to setting up materia for a boss battle. It’s hard and stressful to decide Red has to have haste-all, because Tifa already has barrier-all and Cloud has cure-all, so he can’t have too many summons so he’ll be the last one alive and that means Tifa has to have Knights because Red will be busy casting Haste to cancel all of the Slows the boss will be throwing around...
(that’s packing)
whereas actually flying is like being in the battle, where what to do next is usually pretty clear.
That was right before I discovered that my flight left two hours earlier than I thought it did, and I only hadn’t missed it already because it was delayed. Guess I forgot to hook an all to that haste.
I did warn you it was weird.
Part of it is that here is an unbiased third party assuring me that yes, my friends do actually like me, even when I’m not there. But part of it is the questions themselves, and that boils down to feeling special because someone actually cares to ask and cares what the answers. And there’s a reason for me to tell people things I’ve done and thought, which usually I have a hard time convincing myself of. And maybe also because it’s a test, and I get a pretty cool adrenaline rush from tests.
The thing is, I actually had a similar experience to this, when I lost my purse complete with all my credit cards, and had to answer approximately 500 security questions to cancel them and have new ones mailed to me.. It was an awful stressful situation that I think I still haven’t fully processed. But I did like having all the questions asked of me. So conclusion: I am really weird, but I know myself. Good?
Neurosis number two: I am always quite pleasant to people in airports and on planes. Everyone is really stressed and unhappy and generally unpleasant in these situations, but I smile a lot and actually START conversations. With LIGHT JOKES. This is pretty much opposite of my general behavior with strangers. It isn’t because I like flying. I stopped liking it about the age of 18, and now I hate the stress and the cramped space and the dry air and I always end up feeling juuuust slightly nauseous. But I’m smiling, and meaning it, chiefly because I am contrary. When I am alone or in lab I generally feel a mostly happy even keel, but when I’m with other people I usually feel the opposite of what I ought to. It’s the same reason I always walk at the front of a group, even if that means walking faster than I’d walk alone, and often don’t enjoy my vacations. I’ve tried to fight this tendency, with mixed success. Conclusion: sit next to me on an airplane?
Final travel related thought: as I rode the shuttle to the airport, I felt a great sense of relief, and compared it to setting up materia for a boss battle. It’s hard and stressful to decide Red has to have haste-all, because Tifa already has barrier-all and Cloud has cure-all, so he can’t have too many summons so he’ll be the last one alive and that means Tifa has to have Knights because Red will be busy casting Haste to cancel all of the Slows the boss will be throwing around...
(that’s packing)
whereas actually flying is like being in the battle, where what to do next is usually pretty clear.
That was right before I discovered that my flight left two hours earlier than I thought it did, and I only hadn’t missed it already because it was delayed. Guess I forgot to hook an all to that haste.