World full of a-holes?

This morning I got up bright and early for my flight to Arizona.  My friend Kari was gracious enough to offer to take me to the airport, so when she said she wanted to go to yoga at 6:30am, I said… no problem.   We’ll leave my house by 6.

Bear in mind we were at First Ave last night reliving our 90’s.

So, I get to the airport really early for my flight.  The check in lady was a little short with me, so I made silly comments until she grinned.

People must be really rude to the check in people.

There was no line at security, so another lady and I breezed right through.   We joked about changing our shoes based on taking them off in public and I sheepishly wiggled my toe through the hole in my sock.  We were both pretty sure we had too much dang stuff carried along.

Then I went to buy a book and a cup of coffee.  There was no one in the bookstore, so I asked the gal there if she was a reader and what she had read lately that she could recommend.  That simple question turned into an hour of conversation.  She hugged me when I left, and I got a book that so far I am LOVING. (A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz)

Bought my coffee from a gal that apparently had never been tipped before.

Then I went to a spot to log in and do some work while waiting to board my flight.   The guy already at the remote workstation glowered and grumbled at me for the entire half hour I was there.  Apparently airports are private?  I grinned and toasted him with my dark roast.

On the plane I watched people be rude to each other and to the staff of NWA while they tried to make non-standard luggage fit into overhead bins.  During this time I found out about the 80 year old Michigan couple next to me, who looked 60, had been traveling since 4 AM our time and were still SO excited to be making yet another trip in the plane to be in AZ for the winter. They had 3 kids and 7 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

The bus driver that took a full load to the rental car lot had most of us laughing with his evaluation of the stock market and recommendations to buy one of the 300K houses here for 150 since foreclosure was up so much here.  His advice was to golf, vacation and not think for a second about never being able to retire here.  He was buying up real estate instead.   I congratulated him on his new house while getting off the bus and he grinned at me and said he was looking for someone to share it with.  I wanted to kiss the top of his head… which was at about 5 feet.  He was from India and had been in lovely Arizona for 35 years.

The line for the rental car pick up was pretty long and not moving all that fast, even with about 11 staff trying to get us through.  People actually cut in line, racing to grab a rental associate while others were looking the other way.  For 30 minutes I listened to two guys ahead of me, that were traveling together, try to see who could be more pessimistic while talking on the phones to people who apparently cared.

I kept trying to keep the grin off my face.  They sounded so… trite.. and ridiculous.  It was making me laugh.  They were truly comical.

The lady at the rental car desk and I had a great conversation about healthcare and how her husband is giving up his business dream to stay at a job so they can keep their health insurance.  She grinned through the whole conversation and after 5 minutes with her I knew that she had survived cancer and if she got it again with that attitude… she’d probably beat it again too.  When I went out to get my “compact” cheapo rental car that I am paying a whopping $16 bucks a day for… it was a Ford Escape.

I chatted with the gal at a store where I stopped to pick up a few things and we giggled like little kids about nothing.

So… here is my question…

are people generally a-holes?  Is that why all these people were so amazing and responded so well to me today?  Or did I just meet that many positive people all in one day?

Either way… for a getting up early on no sleep racing around forgetting stuff and having my computer battery die entirely kind of a day…

I’m feeling darn good.

Says me.

S.