Airport stories

Things I've seen this week while travelling through various airports:

• Mr. Popped Collar. He got off a plane in St. Louis, channeling some Ryan Seacrest-esque spiky bleach blond hair, wearing oversized aviator glasses (did I miss when these came into fashion?), and a short-sleeved brown polo with the collar popped.


• The Turquoise Family. A mother, father, and seven children, aged approximately 15 down to 6. Five boys and two girls. The father and several of the kids had a cool European accent. They were headed to Spain, which one of the middle boys quipped was famous for their chocolate. The men in the family were all clad in turquoise polo shirts, and the women sported turquoise t-shirts. I guess color-coding your kids would make them easier to pick out of a crowd.
  
• Musak. The music choice in Wichita baffles me. I heard an instrumental elevator rendition of Smash Mouth's Walking on the Sun. Never in a million years could I have predicted that this particular song would be immortalized as musak.


• Sunglass Challenged. A commonality among annoying men who think too much of themselves: they wear their wrap-around sporty sunglasses backwards or tucked into the back of their collar.


• Loud Talker. Sitting behind me at O'Hare, an aging baby-boomer heading out on vacation was discussing the status of his buddy drinking, getting sloshed, getting slammed, being inebriated, getting hammered, and various other frat-boy euphemism for being totally drunk to his other buddy via cell phone. Maybe he was wearing his sporty sunglasses on the back of his shirt...but I didn't want to turn around and look.


• Preppy Boy. Lincoln Parker wearing a white polo, white shorts, white no-show socks, and white tennis shoes sat near me, eating a powerbar and a banana. Thankfully he didn't talk.


• Tattooed Woman. I tried hard not to stare, but a woman across from me had full tattooed sleeves on her arms, and was wearing an ill-fitting sleeveless top that clung to her in a very unflattering manner.