Prior to my sister’s wedding in February I had never been to a wedding. It’s a shame that she had to go and tie the knot because telling people my life had since been weddingless was a sure-fire conversation starter at parties. Saying I’ve only been to one doesn’t hold the same weight. I’m now left with showing people pictures of the woodworking projects I’ve been creating and maybe talking about my dogs. It’s a good thing I don’t get invited to many parties anymore.
The first wedding evidently opened the floodgates though. I’ve been invited to another four of them in 2023 alone and there doesn’t seem to be any signs of slowing. Eventually my entire PTO budget will be allocated towards 45 minutes of matrimonial rituals, opens bars, and dancing with someone’s grandma to censored Top 40 hits.
I’m currently writing this from the McNamara terminal in Detroit Airport. On the way to, you guessed it, a wedding. In The Bahamas of all places. It’s a destination wedding, which, from what I’ve gathered throughout my limited experience, is a controversial topic. There seems to be a 50/50 split between those that are thrilled to make a vacation out of their elopement experience and those that think it’s rude. I’m indifferent. I think if you’re paying thousands of dollars to throw a party nobody should get to question your decisions.
Airports exist in a realm outside our normal experience. In this land of horizontal escalators and overhead PA systems time doesn’t function on a 24-hour cycle. There’s no noon, or midnight, there’s only boarding time. The people around you are living their lives in ways that would be ridiculous in a 24-hour cycle, but perfectly rational in boarding time. Eating a fried chicken sandwich at 5am in the 24-hour cycle is a borderline eating disorder, but during boarding time that’s dinner, or sometimes breakfast. The same goes for a cup of coffee at 1am. You can do what you want here.
You’re also guaranteed to see the same archetypes of people regardless of when you arrive in real world time. The same businessman taking a work call from the handicap stall NPC event will generate whether you arrive at your gate at 2am or 2pm. That’s just the way airports are coded.
The best time to get on an airplane is right around the time you normally wake up. This means you need to wake up early enough that you have to add a new time to the existing list of 72 alarms in your iPhone. It’s an entirely novel experience for your body. There should be an achievement for waking up and starting your day at every minute in the 24-hour cycle at least once in your life. How many of those minutes do most people try in their lives? I have to imagine the average is somewhere around 30%. Almost everyone gets the 8:00am achievement but it’s probably a rare few that reach the pearly gates with a 3:46am in tow. That’s a shame. 3:46am may be the most magical time in the world to start our days at and many of us will never have even given it a try.
Some of us don’t like waking up early. They aren’t “morning people”. The real secret is that there aren’t many people that are. Sure, there’s a rare few that revel in it but mostly there are just those that have talked themselves into enjoying it and those that haven’t gotten there yet. Just like anything in life there’s good that comes with the bad. Leaving your comfortable bed early might sometimes feel like a rare form of torture but the payoff is that you get to add to your conscious experience. You get to knock another alarm off your bucket list. You get to live a day that is just slightly unique compared to all of your other days and that’s a special thing. When you reach the end of your life and you’ve lived your last early airport wakeup you’re not going to wish you had fewer of them.
There’s so much to see, and so many weddings to go to. Good morning.