Hilarity at the Atlanta airport
Okay, so I’m at the Atlanta airport — over an hour early. I guess my slow experience this morning scared me. Anyway, I’m kinda glad I was here early because I just witnessed one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Hopefully I can convey it well, but I’m probably not that good of a storyteller. Here we go…
So, first I’ll set it up for those who have been in the Atlanta airport. As you know, they have one mass security area for all of the gates, then you take a long escalator down to a shuttle train. It goes from A, to B, to C, etc. I got off the train for my terminal and started to walk towards the long escalator up. And it is a very long escalator. I’m about 15-20 feet away waiting in a crowd forming at the bottom of the escalator when I suddenly feel someone rush by me. At first I thought it was a guy, but it turned out to be a semi-butch overweight girl with short hair. Evidently, she was late for her flight. Granted, that’s still normal — I know what it’s like to be in a big rush at the airport and it’s not fun. But in a moment of rash decision-making, she decided the fastest way to get to her gate would be to run up the descending escalator. At first, she did pretty well, putting at least a few seconds between where she “would have been” on the ascending escalator. The crowd is kind of snickering, more at her going all-out to catch her flight than laughing at her. Then, about 40-50% of the way up, she starts to tire. I don’t blame her, I would also. But she really cracked fast. She went from an all-out sprint to a slow crawl to a desperate attempt to make it to the top. I knew it was going to be tough for her to get there, but she was making very slow progress when we — standing still — passed her around the 75% mark. She kept up with us for a few seconds. Her struggles became more dramatic as she began throwing her luggage up a few steps before taking a few steps, then repeating the process. Then she started falling over and struggling to get back up. Around this point, we were reaching the top, perfectly well-rested, while she was just begging her legs to get her over the top. Only a few steps from the top, she collapsed in exhaustion and was so tired she had to ride all the way back down to the bottom. I, along with a few people who had witnessed the whole debacle, watched as we saw her disappear over the descending escalator. The thing is, it got funnier and funnier as we went up the stairs and about 20 people were literally laughing their asses off by the top. When I saw the sight of her going over the edge completely exhausted, I burst into hysterical laughter. The progression from her extreme rush to collapse (not like fainting collapse, just was too out of breath to continue) was SO funny — I really can’t communicate how funny it was. Anyway, I was still snickering as I walked from the top of the escalator to my gate along the concourse and suddenly, I saw her being rolled down the concourse in a wheel-chair COMPLETELY out of breath giving instructions to the airport employee demanding that he push her faster all the while barking orders at people to get out of the way. All in all, it was about 3 minutes of great entertainment and I’m glad I got to see it. It’s well-worth sitting here for an hour goofing around online as opposed to sitting at foshio’s place for an hour goofing around online.
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