Stories Generally, and Airport Girl (Part 1)

A word of warning. Some of my friends know this, others may not. When I tell stories, I get long-winded, and I tend to write long sentences with lots of commas and semicolons and parentheticals. So, uh, be prepared, and be aware that I am trying to keep things concise, I'm just not very good at it.

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The (possibly still developing, as of this writing) story of Airport Girl is what spurred me to start writing this. If it crashes and burns, then I have no doubt it'll be representative of the other straws that have been building up on the camel's back. If it works out well, hey, great.

Last weekend I was in St. Louis. Though the weather in the Midwest was fine, the flight, which was scheduled to depart at about 1pm local, was delayed due to bad weather in Newark; the anticipated departure time wasn't certain, but it was probably around 3pm. Because I'd been to hockey and baseball games over the weekend, I had both Rangers and Mets gear with me; at the airport I was wearing a Rangers jersey (because, uncharacteristically, I had packed too few shirts and didn't have anything better to wear on the trip home) and Mets hat (because it's less things to carry if you wear it rather than hold it).

I'm sitting near the gate waiting for info about the flight, reading, listening to music, when someone taps on my shoulder. I look up and it's an attractive young blonde woman in a black sweater; earlier I'd noticed her talking to some other passengers with young children in a friendly manner. We'll call her (duh) Airport Girl. She asks if I'm from New York, picking up on the gear I'm wearing, and when I tell her that I am, she asks if I can explain to her how to get into Manhattan from Newark Airport. I say sure, you take the AirTrain from the terminal to the New Jersey Transit station, and then NJT to Penn Station. But hey, I'm doing the same thing, we'll walk together and I'll make sure you don't get lost.

We talk some more, and it comes out that we're both lawyers; she's actually an LLM student (LLM : JD :: MS : BS) on her way to NYC for a job interview. She's from Canada; I love Canada like Rade Serbedzija's character in EuroTrip loves Miami Wice (sic.). (Yes, really. And yes, I really just made that analogy.) We make some more small talk about law school and whatever else, and then it's time to board. So that happens, and we fly to Newark. End scene 1, or whatever.