TRAVEL EXPANDS YOUR HORIZONS

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

I'm waiting to board a plane from San Francisco back to New York, a fairly regular flight. In the past few years I've also  managed to see something of the rest of the world. Sitting in airports, on airplanes, or on the deck of a cruise ship gives me the opportunity to observe my fellow humans and find material for character studies.

I surreptitiously take note of the similarities and disparities of  travelers-- the the details of facial and bodily structures,  styles of clothing and hair, interactions among family and strangers, minor problems and their resolutions.

The loud, elderly woman wearing the latest teen fashions, complete with huge earrings and purple hair makes me smile and speculate while her pre-teen granddaughter rolls her eyes and tries to put distance between them.

A youngish mother with squealing triplets appeals to her husband (immersed in his Wall Street Journal) to "Please, take one of them!" 

 Three young men, two with shaved heads and one with a Mohawk, all with earphones, lounge carelessly, bopping to music, eyeing the pretty girls who wander past, nudging one another, occasionally hazarding a greeting that has so far been ignored.

The grim middle-aged couple in look-alike tan shorts and red
tee shirts haven't looked or spoken to one another in the past twenty minutes.

I invent stories for all of them. Why are they traveling? How did they meet? What is the backstory of
a relationship gone stale? A woman desperate for attention and the semblance of youth? The young men traveling together.

I could put on my own earphones and loose myself in my music or one of the movies I've downloaded onto my computer. But that would interfere with my study of the the human condition and make it difficult to eavesdrop. WRITE ON!