Primates in Concourse A

Last night I got the chance to run through an airport. It was my first time, which is sad since an airport is the one place where it’s okay for adults in regular clothing to have two feet off the ground.

I checked my bag with 17 minutes remaining and a security line, two terminals, and 18 gates to get through, plus an unknown number of slowpoke fatties that would inevitably clog the junk. I gave myself a 4% chance.

The security line was unusually short, and I cleared it in something like 8 minutes and then finished getting re-dressed on a train that had fortuitously just arrived. Now it was looking more like 24%. The big remaining unknowns were leg strength, endurance, fatty density, and gate position.

Gate position: bad news. The gate was on the farthest possible end of the concourse, a good 400-yard dash away. Leg strength: Also bad news. I looked down and remembered that I have chicken legs. Endurance: Ugh. Maybe I shouldn’t have had so much “comfort food” for lunch. Fatty density: They were everywhere. Estimated probability: 1.5%.

I booked it. This was not one of those graceful businessman jogs. There were so many extremities flailing that a TSA agent probably would’ve tackled me if he could catch up with me.

People notice when you run like that. Not the fatties in front of you, who seem to enjoy the role of obstacle, but other people. Children cling to their mother’s thigh and look up in horror. People hold $11 beers at their lips but don’t sip. Smartphones are temporarily looked up from.

Back on the Savannah, if people running in this manner didn’t get your attention, then you were apt to become some large mammal’s afternoon snack, so it makes sense that a primate moving in such a desperate manner would attract other primates’ attention.

Anyway, I enjoyed the silent cheering party, the attention whore I am. Even the obstacles were fun in a kind of obnoxious way.

I arrived at the gate sweaty, out of breath, and exhilarated. I got up to the ticket lady, handed her my boarding pass, and said proudly, “there’s one more coming behind me.” It was my colleague, who I left in the dust from the train. The ticket lady was weirdly silent, and I realized why after I confiscated my window seat from some guy who thought he’d gotten lucky. (Instead, the poor guy got to sit next to a sweaty mofo who hogs armrests.)

I realized after I sat down that I was 10 minutes early. I thought for a moment that the running hadn’t been necessary, but then I corrected myself: No, I totally needed to run. Not because I would’ve been late if I hadn’t, but because that was awesome. Next time, I promised myself, I am going to get to the airport an hour earlier and I am going to pack a convenient stick of deodorant, because I am going to run equally as hard. In fact, I will probably do laps just to see if I can confuse the onlooking primates.

And it occurred to me that that’s probably a good motto for life: Arrive an hour earlier, pack a convenient stick of deodorant, and see if you can confuse the onlooking primates.