A Travel Tale Told by an Idiot

December 27th, 2008, 7:16 am

I am on my way to the airport. This is the day that I fly back to Canada from Japan.

In the train, I am standing up and facing the doors. On the doors, there are three black smudges. I begin trying to line up the shadow of my head with these smudges so that they look like eyes and a mouth. The train is jerking back and forth, so it’s not easy. When I finally manage to do it, I have a kind of out-of-body experience. I am able to look down and see myself grinning at the shadow-face that I have created on the train door. This makes me very sad, and yet also very happy – because, after all, I have made a face.

8:12 am

I am at the airport and walking to the American Airlines counter to check in my baggage.

I am so focused on trying to find the counter that I accidentally run into a boy who has bright red hair, and I knock a candied pipe out of his mouth. He glares at me and picks up his pipe and dusts it off. His face is so grumpy that, for a second, he looks like a real old man with a real pipe. He curses me, but his words are just jibber-jabber. He says, “Brajabijababubrasha.” Maybe it is Portuguese, but is it possible for Portuguese people to have red hair? Of course not!

I realize that I have no idea what a Portuguese person looks like. I make a mental note to Google “Portugal” when I get home. If I remember, that is. Which I won’t.

9:09 am

I am waiting at the gate to board the plane.

My stomach does not feel good. This is partly because I will be spending the next 13 hours of my life sealed inside a metal tube, breathing in recycled burps and farts, and watching re-runs of the “hilarious” show Monk. I am also not feeling good because, the previous night, when I went out for dinner with a local doctor and his son, I ate the part of a shellfish that you aren’t supposed to eat.

When I put it in my mouth, I said, “This is very bitter,” and I swallowed it.

The doctor said, “It is the bad part. Please don’t eat it.”

“It was poo,” said his son, grinning.

I gently placed my chopsticks in front of me and stared down at them. The doctor and his son probably thought that I was admiring their intricate design, but really, I was trying to align the shadow of my head with them so that they would look like a mouth.

9:35 am

I am still waiting at the gate.

I see the red-haired little boy again. He and his mother come and sit beside me. The boy has a fresh candied pipe in his mouth. The pipe itself is made of black licorice, and small specks of red candy have been sprinkled on the end to simulate burning embers. I truly love the smell of a pipe.

The mother glances over at my notepad – the notepad on which I’ve been recording these idiotic travel experiences. The words at the top of the page are, “I see the red-haired little boy again.” She grabs her luggage and her son’s hand and moves to another part of the room – at the maximum possible distance from me and my notepad.

I notice now that the boy’s hair really is a remarkable shade of red. I wonder if that hair will be a boon or a bane to him in later life? Ron Howard did quite well, but the guy from the Partridge family? Not so much.

10:01 am

I begin to play my favourite airport game. It is called, “Name the Distinguishing Feature.” What I do is, I look at the people around me, and I try to come up with their most distinguishing feature as quickly as possible.

Unibrow! Sweet eyes! Paralyzed from the waist down! Could he be a terrorist?

You should try to remain silent when you’re playing this game, especially if the most distinguishing feature is “full-blown acne.” It is impossible for me to stress this enough.

10:26 am

We begin boarding the plane. As I approach my seat, a very large woman (she would be “triple chin” in the “Distinguishing Feature” game) asks me to help her put her bag in the overhead compartment. Weird how she’d ask me, because, if she were to play the “Distinguishing Feature” game with me, her answer would probably be “needs more protein in his diet.”

I have never lifted anything so heavy in my life. I would have preferred to stuff her into the overhead compartment. What had she filled her suitcase with? Molten steel? A black hole? Starr Jones? As I struggle with it, I look down and see a sly-faced man grinning up at me, taking immense pleasure in my suffering.

“Is it goin’ in there?” the woman says to me.

“It doesn’t seem to want to – ”

“Go on! You got to really ram it in there – ”

I look down at the man again, and he is smiling more than ever, because the woman’s words have made it sound like she and I are having rough sex. This adds a hint of dirtiness to everything that I say after.

“I can’t! I don’t think it’s going to fit!”

“PUSH!”

“I am pushing!”

“Oh, don’t worry ‘bout it then,” says the woman. “If you can’t get it in, you can’t get it in.”

“Ok!” I say, and I let go of the suitcase, thinking that she has it. She doesn’t, and it comes crashing down onto the smiling man. He stops smiling and pretends to go to sleep. He keeps this charade up for the entire flight. Silly little guy.

11:03 am

And we’re off.