Groggy Thoughts Upon Returning to America

The flight from Buenos Aires to Houston got in around 5 a.m., and I went directly to the gate of my connecting flight to take a nap on the floor. I slept for a while, before being awakened by the voice of a woman nearby who was loudly telling her young child to stop crying (if I'd been in Argentina, I would have perhaps not understood her and have been able to tune it out, but -- sigh -- welcome back to the land of overheard conversations).

Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.

As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.

Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.

Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?

The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?

Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?

All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.

That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.

P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...