“Three Cups”

I have no idea what to do in an airport. When I was eight or nine or ten or even until I was twelve I thought I had it figured out. All it took was a little blue backpack stuffed with a boxy black DVD player and a couple of movies. Maybe three if the flight was more than four hours. Radio and Like Mike were two of my favorites. Any ten-year-old boy old can tell you Shad Moss, formerly Bow Wow, formerly Lil Bow Wow, was underrated in his role as Calvin Cambridge. I still think he deserved an Oscar. On the return leg I could usually talk my Mom into a bag of Twizzlers and I was set.

I lost my touch when I was sixteen, I think. The DVD player broke and I was stuck with my laptop, which meant buying my own movies. Usually books were the better option, but I tended to be too ambitious and with my picks and gave up on reading before the plane was at the gate.

I resent the businesswomen who only need a coffee and a folded newspaper and they’re set for a two hour-layover and a four-hour flight and they’ll step off the plane roll out a perfect presentation for corporate in Chicago. Same for the grandpas and grandmas flying with their grandchildren who can’t sit still long enough for Papa or Grammy to eat the sandwiches they brought from home. Those grandparents will be occupied from the second they check in to the second they touch down, grumbling and coaxing and laughing and doing everything they can to make sure the kids don’t embarrass them and everyone in the security line.

But I’m lost in a terminal. Out-of-sorts. Confused. Off my game. I love a good cab ride. Traffic on the way to the airport doesn’t bother me. Especially in South America. That continent has the most conversational cabbies and it’s not even close. Lima is good for that type of thing, but Buenos Aires is the best. This was my second cab ride to an airport in that city. The first one was to a tiny domestic, and I was too tired to speak. This was to the big one, Ministro Pistarini. The airport code is EZE. No one could ever give me a good reason for that. The traffic in the departure lane piles up at 6 AM and doesn’t slow down until after midnight. The EZE terminal isn’t any worse than LaGuardia or O’Hare or LAX. It’s got a boring exterior by Latin American standards. Jose Marti in Havana is orange. EZE is straightforward, glass, white walls, and concrete. The layout makes sense. It’s well-organized and customs are quick. It took a few minutes to check-in, but I put that on my shaky Spanish. This was a Sunday, and Buenos Aires sets aside Sundays for its hangover. People don’t leave clubs until 6, and they don’t leave their beds until Monday. They certainly don’t fly.

I had enjoyed my last night there. It had only been five weeks, but I wasn’t on their weekend schedule yet. I had only been out until 5:30. I felt like I had a good reason to be tired. I deserved some coffee. It was last shot at South American coffee for a while. So I had two cups. The rolls it came with made my mouth dry. So I ordered a third and finished it quickly. It’s nine hours from Buenos Aires to Miami. It’s another hour from Miami to Tampa. Customs in Miami aren’t slow. They don’t mess around with flights from Cuba and Colombia and Brazil and Venezuela. My flight left EZE at 6 PM. I wasn’t in my bed until 5:30 the next morning.

If you like to read while you wait for your flight, you would have been fine. Fifty pages and eight hours of sleep. If you’re a movie person you could’ve knocked out a rom-com and been asleep before they brought the meal. If you drink three cups of coffee that’s stronger than you’re used to, you’re up for all nine hours wondering why you’re Spanish isn’t better or why you forgot to buy your mom a gift at the market or why you didn’t get that girl’s number at the club or why you left your one warm jacket in your apartment or why you don’t have a job lined up for the rest of the summer. You might have no idea what to do in an airport, but you don’t order three cups of coffee. I think I’ll go back to Like Mike and Twizzlers.