passenger in transit

For some strange reason, airplanes normally decide to arrive all of them at the same hour, to the same airport and the queue at immigration is generally long, specially when there are like 10 counters and only one or two officers that with o-ffi-ci-al slow-paced motion are dedicated to make stupid questions and find out about the life of each of the people that go through their hands. How many days are you staying? And what are you here for? And what do you do for a living? Where are you coming from? Where are you going to stay? and why do you care about that and why are you asking if I already wrote all that in the stupid little paper? Can’t you read? They look at the passports as if they were looking for something o-ffi-ci-a-lly important, but I really think that what they do is laugh about the pictures and the answers on their breaks (they don’t laugh about the names, because… they don’t know how to read).

During those long waits when you are traveling alone, it’s most likely that you‘ll end up making up some way to use that time. Reading is not very practical, because the maneuvers that have to be done with the book, the carry on, the coat, the I-have-my –passport-ready-on-my-hand-although-I-know-I’ll-be-in-this-queue-forever and everything else to make the miserable little step forward every time somebody moves don’t let me concentrate. Talking with the person in front or behind you it’s not always the greatest option, because they could be like me and answer only with a grunt or they could be like a friend of my sister’s and then you can not get rid of them and you think it’s better to lend them some money so they could take a cab and leave you alone. What I do sometimes is counting how many people are there, how many people with a computer, how many people with dark pants, with leather jackets, how many people have a ‘I’m so bored’ face, a work face, a face that looks like as soon as they cross those doors somebody is waiting for him/her to take him/her to a nice place and have a good time (there are not so many that look like that, but, really, there are some). Getting the earphones on and listen to some music is one of the best options, but that leaves the mind free and, not only that, free and inspired to think about something else.

One of the first things you have to do is to estimate the waiting time. If there’s more than 20-30 people in front of you is worth it. Nevertheless, as the process depends on 1) how annoying is the questionnaire of each officer, 2) how slow is each passenger, 2) how badly have they filled the stupid paper that is not going to be read anyway and 4) how many kids/suitcases/coats each passenger is carrying; the results could vary significantly. Therefore, it’s recommended to count the time that at least 5 passengers take to go through and make an average. Knowing the waiting time is usually useless, but at least provides entertainment for 10 minutes.

On this occasion, with a queue of approximately 50 people in front of me and a similar number behind me, 2 officers and an average of 2 minutes per passenger, plus a high percent of kids running around and a tour of about 10 people (those are the worst) I had enough time and material to play a more sophisticated game…

First I did a quick screening of the persons from the opposite sex that were in the queue alone or at least not with something that could look like and obvious partner or kids. That is, opposite sex people with a slight possibility of being available. There were like 30, a good number and most of them behind me, which meant more playing time. The next step was to discard the ones that, for very obvious reasons, were not going to work whether because they looked too young, too old or too short (those selection criterias can be changed according to the taste of each player). Now there were 15 specimens left. With less candidates I was able to step into the next ‘filter’ that takes a bit more of time and consists on analyzing how much of a ridicule family, friends and myself would be able to do of them. Getting rid of the worst, I started looking for the best options between the available ones. Imagining (mostly based on past references) how the nature of each of them might be I made the next elimination: that one looks like Gaby’s ex and he was annoying, and that other one looks like that painful guy that worked with me once, and that over there looks like my brother-in-law… Some of them were really scary.

After that last step there were only 3 or 4 left. Those were looked at in more detail, shoes, suitcases, hands, hair-cuts (how much hair is left, it there’s any hair left). If they were smiling stupidly or did the look interestingly serious, if they were reading something and what or listening to music. One of them was reading a self-help book… immediately discarded, another one was smiling stupidly… point against. Now there was only one left. He was not particularly handsome, but looked interesting. He looked at me looking at him and smiled, I played dumb, easy thing for me to do, and looked somewhere else. Few seconds later I’m looking back at him and he was still looking my way and smiled again. No, no, no, that was not the game objective! It was just statistical… and now, what could I do??

“Next!”, my turn for immigration…. Thank God.