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Airport Loud Speakers
By Cara Anderson
Surely Orville and Wilber Wright never envisioned the hullabaloo that their invention the airplane has caused. Even ignoring the grand debate of green-house gases, fuel prices, and weekly Air France strikes, there remains the airplane industry’s greatest inconvenience. Something must be done about it, since it will surely prove to be the downfall of 21st century man. Yes, I am referring to connecting flights through International Airports. For those who have yet to suffer through their first multi-national flight, let me explain.
You have been flying for about three thousand hourswhen the pilot finally announces you are about to land at your destination. Sleep probably did not come to you, in spite of the two-year-old a seat behind trying to lull you with her screeching and tantrums. Of course, it had been rather interesting to hear the middle-aged man eight rows ahead explaining to his lately deaf neighbor the effects of importing spoons in the American economy. So you prop your eyelids open with the plastic wrapped toothpicks the airline has kindly provided, waiting as the plane lands to see that beacon of freedom (a.k.a. the seat-belt light) give you and three hundred other passengers the signal to rush for the aisle, only to stand in line for the ten minutes until the doors open. After ambling past the much-too cheery cabin crew and finally taking your first steps into the sovereign airport’s realm, the fun has only just begun.
Of course each airport is different, but every single one seems to have been constructed with the main idea of confusing Einstein himself. Hopefully your baggage is checked all the way through (if not—my deepest condolences), so now you just have to learn how to get yourself from terminal A1 to terminal Z83649. To walk all that way would be difficult, so the airport is kind enough to provide you with trains, moving sidewalks, and/or golf carts with non-English-speaking drivers. You can’t help but smirk at the pedestrians while riding on one of these contraptions since it is getting you to the wrong gate faster.
Eventually, you find yourself at the right departing terminal pledging never to leave it (even if it means skipping out on that tofu-serving McDonalds). There is another trial that you must pass before you gain entrance into that sanctuary, however. Though we know that security checkpoints at every terminal are necessary—since all airport convenience stores now sell home-made explosive devices—they loose their glamour very quickly.
Your bags get their free medical check up on the x-ray machine while you step through the finicky metal detector that beeps out its displeasure of your teeth fillings. So the over-paid airport worker standing in front of you, with arms crossed, says, “Step this way, please. Someone will be with you momentarily to frisk Um, I don’t know of a replacement word, or I would take it out. Frisk is when police or security guards come and pat you down to see if you have weapons on your body. you in a modernized and politically correct way.”
In due course another airport worker comes over with a magic wand, begins waving it around, and speaking in what seems to be a foreign language:
“Teek ove eyore hoose, dees.”
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With a confused look you reply, “Um, me no speaken dutchen.”
They get mad and say it louder. “Teek ove eyore hoose!’
“OK. Me no speak Espanol.”
They get red in the face and start pulling out their hair, “TEEK OVE EYORE HOOSE!”
Finally a fellow offender leans over and says, “Just take off your shoes already!”
Of course, this misunderstanding does not help you and your frisker’s relationship—hitting someone over the head with the wand is not usually part of the process, one would think. You finally get through it and feel lucky to end up walking away with your shoes and a lumpy head.
Finally, you’re at your Departing Terminal Sanctuary—where you can sleep, read, or do anything you want (except set off the bomb you bought at the convenience store, thanks to the over-excitable security team). Unfortunately, other passengers can do what they want also. The three year old twins amuse themselves with poking and yelling at each other, while the elderly man contents himself with snoring that would wake the dead. Of course, worse of all is that man, kin to the one eight seats ahead of you in the arriving plane.
The man speaks like he has a loud speaker installed in him. You are lying under the seats, trying to recover some of that sleep you were cheated out of, but his voice blasts away any chance of it. You try plugging your ears—but the tissues hardly seem to work. You try covering your head with your backpack—only to realize a few hardcover books can drastically limit a sack’s comfort. Finally, you give up, and listen to the man with frustrated tears in your eyes, Kleenexes sticking out your ear, and an even lumpier head.
What you find out amazes you. The man has been sharing his testimony and the Gospel the whole time! Guilt washes over you for judging the man. Here you were complaining about a guy who was fulfilling the Great Commission better than you were. Shame-filled, you remember the people you had looked at from your own selfish view-point: the two year old a seat behind you, your Cheshire-stewardess, the wand-bearing security guard, and this vocal chap. He, on the other hand, saw people through God’s eyes: as hurting, tired souls needing the Gospel.
Of course, this is just one of my own experiences in a connecting airport, but it opened my eyes. Human beings tend to look through their own self-shaded glasses. When God told Samuel, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1st Sam 16:7),” perhaps He was telling Christians to take of those glasses and see every human as a living soul. Wherever we are, whoever we cross on our path, God expects us to see what He sees: a hurting or needy heart. It could be that the Lord just wants you to be an example in actions, so loudspeakers don’t have to be necessary—even if one particular set in the airport did show me people’s souls.