Just Another Day at LAX

It’s early morning right before sunrise and I’m tiredly waiting in the security check line at LAX. The line is so long it raps around like multiple fives stacked on top of each other. Yet even with the ropes that organize the people within the line, there were still too many people so I was standing outside towards the end of the line. The people in the line were all from different cultures. A young woman who stood behind me was on the phone. She seemed very distressed and her eyes were puffy and red like she had been crying all night. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties and was African American. Her hair was in many small thin braids that went up to her shoulders in length. She wore a plain black shirt with black leggings, and to my surprise she was wearing pink fluffy slippers. She reminded me of my old classmates from Jr. High. They often wore their pajama bottoms with furry slippers to school and most of them were African American girls. “And why not? Why you even gonna say that?” The young woman argued on the phone and was still moving her hands like the person she was talking to was right in front of her. She proceeded with her conversation and occasionally made heads turn towards her because she was being a little too loud. An older Caucasian man stood before me, and he seemed pretty irritated at nothing in particular. Perhaps he did not have patience when it came to waiting in lines. He was in his early forties and wore a light blue button up shirt with tan dress pants. He looked like a business man and he repeatedly tapped his dress shoes which I presume is just a habit derived from being irritated. As the line continued to move forward, I kept noticing the expression on people’s faces. Everyone looked either tired or bored. It was a blank look, however I notice that only infants and children looked entertained. A little girl, no more than 6 years old sang a lullaby to herself. Her singing made random people smile around her. She wore flower printed pajama bottoms and a purple shirt and held what seemed to be an iPod touch. The little girl seemed like she was mixed, but her mother was definitely Asian. The mother looked at her daughter and nodded to the song. They exchanged smiles and then the mother started going through her purse. I was almost at the front of the line and noticed the TSA woman scanning the ID’s and passports. She was Hispanic with her hair slicked back in a ponytail. She looked bored and would give a fake smile after handing people their ID’s back. I finally made it to the security check, and while I waited to go through the huge drug scanner, I saw the Asian mother and daughter placing their bags through security. The daughter seemed as though she had gone through airport security plenty of times. I finally went through security and hoped that this day ahead of me would not be as brutal as standing in that hour long line.