Isn’t that dangerous?

Five hours waiting in an airport makes you take risks you wouldn’t ordinarily consider worth losing your life over. I decided to break my time into manageable pieces and the first part of the program was eating. I call the first activity ‘danger eating’. This requires you engage in conversation with someone who may or may not be insane.

So given that I was looking at an interminable stretch of time alone I made a beeline for the scariest looking person. These sort of people are great because generally speaking, they simply aren’t suspicious of any alternative agendas. Not like, say, an attractive woman or male. To engage in dialogue with attractive folk turns you into the scariest person in the conversation. This, please note, becomes awkward.

Maria was a fairly menacing looking woman well into her fifties, dressed in a large black mountaineering jacket with a beanie that covered her eyebrows. I don’t know if this says more about me than her, but I noticed she also had an impressive thick rope of black braided hair slung over her shoulder. The other important thing to note was she was well on her way to a happy place, plied with alcohol and loud music courtesy of her ipod, which she later informed me that she had no idea about how it worked other than it was on random.

So I sat, having got my lunch, with Maria in the ‘bar’ (symbolically separated from the smallish food court by the type of people seated there – tense looking mothers raging quietly at their children in the food court, tense looking mothers raging loudly at their children in the bar). I of course checked it was okay to join Maria because nothing is quite as embarrassing as being kicked to death in the make shift bar of an airport. Maria shared her story with me of her work on the mine site up north, at one point suddenly slapping the table with a bear like swat, proclaiming that she was having a change of scenery supervising the loading of acid into some sort of refinery process. Something of a tangent, but I am the last who should be complaining.

“Acid?” I asked.

“Containers of acid sweetheart.” She tended to swallow her vowels as she masked her belching.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked this thinking that the safety measures in place were probably so over the top that her answer would be a resounding assurance that it was totally safe. Maria’s body betrayed the advanced state of intoxication by gurgling as she said,
“DANGEROUS?! (insert peculiar hollow noise from esophagus on third syllable) IS IT DANGEROUS?! FUCKIN’ OATH IT’S DANGEROUS IT’LL KILL YA. THAT TIPS ON YA – YOU GOT NO BONES LEFT NO NUTHIN’ !’.” She emphasized this with a far away look in her eye as she took a swig of beer. Believe it or not it is deeply encouraging that people like Maria are out on the job, and I can’t do justice to the deepness of this weary traveler’s story. Needless to say I was incredulous about the acid component of her story.

I come from a world where senior high school students have to swim in water no deeper than their waist, in a group of no more than 35, supervised by a qualified life saver. It is a pathetic site – teenagers standing listlessly in thigh deep glassy water. I miss the days where death could stroll casually by as life’s consummate teacher, taking the odd participant out by the ear as a object lesson about human stupidity. These days stupidity is nurtured and allowed to remain in the gene pool. Where’s the risk?

Well, apparently it’s in Queensland Airport and Port Moresby.

I said goodbye to Maria as she thanked me for her company and careened off to make her flight. I then found the Reverend Richard Turnbull. I only registered that he was a reverend after a read his business card hours after leaving his company. I had sat at a table with Richard at the Conference I was returning from but didn’t have the opportunity to talk to him. Suffice to say he had a sense of humor. During a thank-you speech at the end of the conference, given by one of our New Zealand colleagues he echoed quietly each sharpened syllable as she wound her way through her speech. I’ve got to admit it was one of the most pronounced New Zealand accents I’ve ever heard, but she had a nice dress on.

Anyway, we were conversing politely when a molar shattering alarm erupted over the food court. It was the sort of noise that was incongruent with people calmly strolling around. Which is precisely what everyone did as no one seemed to know what to do. What was needed was for people to scream and run in random directions, indiscriminately smashing stuff. Look, even just one person screaming and smashing stuff would have sufficed. A business man throwing a stainless steel bin through one of the large plate glass windows and heroically beckoning for us to follow him to safety as he leapt down into a jet turbine of a waiting aircraft, would have sufficed. But instead people continued to walk calmly around. So I went off to the toilet where I noticed in the toilet you could vaguely hear an announcement. It sounded important. But I figured if it WAS important then surely I should have been able to hear it. It was an airport, it was post 9/11. I didn’t take into account it was Queensland.

I returned to Richard where the shops of the food court were now being closed by giggling girls. Yeah, weird, but they were laughing uproarishly in a girly sort of way, while they clacked in loose footwear and covered their butt cracks as they bent down to secure things in their low slung hipsters. Finally the Queenslanders were taking things seriously. So Richard and I moved a little way over to the departure lounge of Gate 22. Now floods of people were moving briskly down the escalators. In fact, crowds of people who I had only just seen twenty minutes ago board a plane were now leaving.

It occurred to me that something might be wrong.

People glanced at the two of us in disbelief. Now I felt we were perhaps being a little cavalier about the whole thing. Maybe there was a fire, or a bomb or perhaps Maria had a little accident with an acid sample.

I persuaded Richard that perhaps it was for the best that we leave like everyone else, because being reduced to carbon, ash or fat was not cool.

Too my utter amazement we walked past a girl sitting reading a book at the counter of an expensive accessories shop. I walked in and inquired if she had a) heard the alarm (which I was talking over the top of) and b) noticed the crowds of people fleeing.

She responded, barely taking her eyes off the page, “No, it’s just like, they’re testing the sirens.”

“Um….yes, except that everyone has left…” There was no reaction until I said, “…yeah… even the skinny giggling girls from the Beach shop, the Australia shop and the News Agent shop – they’ve closed their shops and left with the crowds, all that’s left up here is a woman with her baby and Maria, and they’re all drunk.” (Look, I don’t know if the baby was drunk, but given she was probably breast fed the odds were pretty good, plus it was Queensland) We finally had her attention. Some ancient rivalry had stirred deep within at the mention of her arch nemesis the skinny giggling shop girls. With a mixture of disgust and hurt she uttered, “No one tells me anything,” before throwing her book down and leaving. I wondered if she should have at least thrown a bin out of a plate glass window before launching herself at the turbine of a jet engine.

Finally, once down stairs Richard and I could hear the unnerving voice over “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. BLAH BLAH BLAH SOMETHING ABOUT NOT SMASHING STUFF AND ACTING CALMLY.”

Apparently the food court upstairs didn’t have an adequate P.A. system. So Richard and I followed the masses outside all the time waiting for the sudden eruption of whatever death dealing device had prompted the evacuation. Unsurprisingly, and I must say thankfully, no event occurred and we returned through security half an hour later talking loudly about God, Biblical Exegesis and our theories about good looking women. Judging by the glances we were getting, several rules were apparently contravened about what can and can’t mention about God.

Next entry: The D.A.N. Conference. Warning: It’s probably going to be one of those serious sober entries. Then again I usually start off that way.