Last week Nick and I went to my friend Erin's wedding in Atlanta. It was beautiful and perfect, but what I really want to talk about is the Kansas City airport, because that's where we spent a great deal of our time during the trip. You see, we had originally planned to fly out Thursday at about 4 o'clock, but that morning we got an automated message from Delta telling us that our flight had been cancelled. "We have protected you," the voice said, "on Flight Blah Blah Blah departing Friday at 7:10. Sorry for the inconvenience." First of all, I love that they used the term "protected," like we were surrounded by wild dingoes and then Delta the Barbarian came charging in with his gleaming deltoids and Austrian accent, wrapped us in a non-flammable blanket, and carried us to safety. Yeah, thanks for protecting us on a flight that leaves at 7 o'clock in the freakin' morning. We really appreciate that.

So we went to bed at about 9, although I wasn't able to sleep until well after 1 o'clock (thanks to the utter inflexibility of my circadian rhythms). We got up at 4, packed up our stuff, and drove blearily to the airport. On the way, we saw a billboard reading, "Weed: The more you smoke, the less you care," which struck us as funny because, if a person is looking for something to distract him/her from a difficult life, that slogan is the perfect advertisement for lighting up a big fat spliff. We would invoke this notion several hours later while we were watching the sun make its long, slow ascent over Terminal C, feeling like Charlton Heston stranded on a primitive alien planet where no branch of the NRA has yet been established. Once we arrived at the Delta gate, you see, we discovered that our second flight had been cancelled as well.

Kierkegaard, in his "The Sickness Unto Death," describes the principle of existentialist despair. Such despair occurs when a person, due to the uncertainty and absurdity of the world around her, experiences the loss of self, and this is exactly what happens when you sit in an airport for seven hours with only a Sudoku booklet to entertain you. Things get all strung out and abstract. You hear ethereal voices in the air, telling you not to accept packages from unknown persons. Everything outside the airport loses its concreteness and becomes purely hypothetical, a poor man's Schrodinger's cat scenario. Is the cat still alive, you ask yourself, noshing on Meow Mix and coughing up hairballs? Or is it dead? Perhaps the cat never existed in the first place. Perhaps the cat is only an idea projected onto the world by our human brains to fill a void in the universe, a desperate yearning for the notion of cat-ness. The nonbeliever might be called a cat-theist, while the faithful flock aspires to the feral grace of their feline benefactors.

As you can see, it's not a good idea to put me in a situation with drastically reduced stimuli. The imagination runs rampant, drowning out every reasonable impulse. If I were stranded on an island, it wouldn't take me 20 years to reach Ben Gunn's wild-eyed state of exaggerated eccentricity. I'd get there within a day.

At any rate, we were told that we could get on a flight that departed shortly before 1 pm, so we camped out a sheltered corner of the airport...and waited. This is what we saw:

School Girl. School Girl gets the top of the list because she was by far the most memorable person in the airport. She was forty-ish, very tall, and dressed from head to toe in a classic school girl outfit. Pigtails, demure white shirt, white knee socks, and a very short plaid skirt. Sounds good, right? The thing is, she walked in a distinctly unfeminine way, with her shoulders hunched, and practically stomped through the baggage-check line. From a distance I felt sure she was a man, but when she approached I realized she wasn't. Who was this oddly built woman, I wondered, whose proportions gave her the appearance of a redneck anime superhero? What sort of person dresses like this in public? Where was she flying to? What sort of life did she lead? Speculations about this woman's mysterious life staved off boredom for a good long while, and for that, I thank her. Go go School Girl!

Montana girl with Zeppelin Dog. Nothing was particularly strange about Montana girl or her dog but, watching the airport guys prepare the dog's plastic crate for the flight, I started thinking about what the dog had in store for him. What would it be like for a dog to fly for the first time...the revving of the engines...the sensation of changing pressure...what would it be thinking? "What in blazes is that noise," it would ask itself, as it sat among the luggage and wondered where its humans had gone. "It sounds like a really loud air conditioner. Perhaps we're going to war, and I've been drafted." As for the zeppelin part...well, I called it Zeppelin Dog because I had this idea about how awesome it would be if the airplanes could tow all the traveling animals in a zeppelin behind it. That way they would have, like, their own aircraft, as well as a completely separate flying experience, untainted by those pesky humans. As you may recall, I was operating on very little sleep at the time.

Crazy mafia wife with her daughter. Clothing by Spiegel. Attitude by Zsa Zsa. Crack cocaine courtesy of Whitney. This platinum-haired diva was dragging her poor daughter around by a pink sleeve, looking about as focused as the Hubbell telescope before it got its prescription upgraded. (Now Mr. Telescope, is it better this way, or this way? Number 1 or number 2?) But to be fair, she was weighed down with so much gold jewelry that it was probably having an impact on her circulation, which in turn prevented adequate oxygen from reaching her brain. The poor dear. At any rate, I like to think she and her daughter made it safely to their destination, courtesy of the Witness Protection Program.

Angry businessman. Self-explanatory. One of the most common species seen in the wild at the airport. This particular gentleman barked into a microscopic phone for well over an hour, first to the Delta people and then to his business compadres, keeping up an incessant stream of chatter about how The Seminar just couldn't go on without him. This guy was noteworthy because it was obvious he was performing for the benefit of everyone around. You've seen this type, right? The type with so little sense of self (hello, existential despair!) that they feel the need to impress everyone within earshot at every moment? Trust me, Angry Businessman, we don't give a crap about your company's vision goals or your new company car. It's not that we hate you. In fact, we wish you well. Your luxury suite at the Radisson? Yeah, we hope it's full of hookers and booze. Just please give the phone theatrics a rest.

There was also:

The laid-back army guys. These guys missed the same flight we did, so we ended up sitting by them for the better part of the morning. They were funny and nice, but they were wearing those fatigues that look like really comfortable pajamas so I kept getting sleepy.

H.P. Lovecraft child. Little boy wearing yellow pants and a paper crown. Get it? Yellow pants. Cause he was like the king. In yellow. But probably not as evil.

Lolita & Humbert Humbert. A be-ribboned high school girl on the arm of middle-aged man. We knew Lolita went to high school because of the letter jacket. At first we thought the man was her father, but then things got creepy and we weren't so sure. Unfortunately, they left before we could more thoroughly assess the situation. As a side note: They were both native Kansas Citians, so unlike the characters in the book, this couple didn't work as a metaphor for Europe as a declining, sophisticated figure in love with a seductive, adolescent America. Just thought you should know.

Over-earnest Starbucks employee. Very nice guy behind the counter who sincerely wished me well after handing me a cinnamon roll. This one was rough on me. See, I feel guilty enough about being at a Starbucks in the first place (I was in dire need of a cinnamon roll and the Cinnabon store was in another terminal) without this guy's niceness complicating things. All I want is to believe that Starbucks and anyone associated with it is evil. Is this too much to ask? But then here comes this friendly guy making me realize that while Starbucks may in fact be a soulless entity (and, along with Wal-Mart, a viable contender for corporate antichrist), its employees are human. Why, Starbucks employee...why? It's not fair to change my worldview this early in the morning.

Let's see. What else? Well I could mention that during our extended stay, we made friends with one of the Delta employees. Stockholm Syndrome, I suppose. And did you know that you're not allowed to bring chainsaws on board an airplane? I mean, seriously. What is Leatherface supposed to do when he travels?

That's about it, really. Once we got to Atlanta things went smoothly (mostly), and on Sunday we hopped a flight back without incident. Our airport vigil is now just an amusing blur. But what you really want to know, I'm sure, is what did Nick get me for my birthday when we got back? Well I'll tell you. It was an iPod, a Che Guevara doll, and three rolls of Bubble Tape. Score!