34. Stay Young, Say the Dead

"How To Be A Person" for Sunday September 8th, 2024

YVR, Gate 82. August 15th 2024

It’s been so nice not being on instagram these last few months. I can’t tell you how my life has improved. The best thing about it is I don’t feel ashamed for wasting time and comparing myself to others. And I sleep better because I’m not staring at my phone.

An Australian woman dances her baby to sleep. Horrifying music shivs from her phone. A tinny saccharine-encrusted knife in the ears of anyone but a parent (in the throws of babyhood). You will go to extreme lengths to stay on schedule especially as a first time parent. As she grooved and swayed and cooed (in Australian) I saw the necklace she was wearing, flipped around so it was out of the way of her baby secured to her front via Bjorn. The same necklace my children’s mother wore a dozen years earlier as she did the very same thing in the very same airport travelling to the very same place.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen. AC 545 Vancouver to Los Angeles is now boarding all zones as quickly as possible so that the gate crew can leave and you all can stand in the overheated jetway and breathe in each other’s warm breath before stacking yourselves into this sardine can of a Boeing — this one’s not the convertible model, don’t worry.”

Then I remembered the woman that does the voice over at Vancouver International Airport is an old friend of mine. One that I’ve lost touch with. One of the first people I had sex with when I returned to Vancouver from the University in Calgary. All I remember is a blue tattoo on a juicy derriere.