A Marvelous Prospect

I’m going to start a new series of blog posts of a category “airport stories.” their key attribute will be that they are a gimpse into the lives of folks I meet while waiting to board airplanes, and sometimes the people I sit next to while flying.

This new category is inspired by two people I’ve encountered this fall in my travels to Chicago and Boston.

Returning from Chicago in late October, I gate-checked my bag (avoiding the stinkin $25 fee – bah), which meant I had to wait for it to get belched out of the bowels of RDU after my 10:30 pm arrival home.

I casually greeted the little lady who was waiting beside me, and she returned it in a voice with an accent. As is my custom, I asked where she was from – Italy. Because I’ve been blessed to travel there once, I asked where, exactly, and it turned out that she was born and raised in northwestern Italy – the area Kathy and I had traveled through.

I told her about almost eating at a Mexican restaurant in the Italian Alps, but electing not to because of the narrow twisty-turny mountain road that I wanted to be off of before dark. It smelled soooo good, but we ended up eating the best mushroom ravioli of our lives that evening in town.

Our pleasant conversation continued while we waited for our bags, and I learned that she had lived much of her adult life in Peru. She related a restaurant incident too: she had returned “home” from Peru to show her son around the area where she had grown up, and had gotten caught in weather that closed all the restaurants – except one, who was almost closed but agreed to feed them. The proprietor was from Peru! Small world.

Now comes the six degrees of separation thing (which I think is hooey, but hey!). Why it took me so long, I have no idea, but as the bags were finally dropping onto the conveyor, I mentioned that I was from Beaumont, Texas. Well, the lady that was picking her up that evening, one of her dear friends, had just moved to Beaumont, where her husband had accepted the position of CIO for Lamar University – my Alma Mater. Smaller world.