What Is It About Traveling? | Teen Ink

What Is It About Traveling?

August 11, 2015
By esteinberg9 BRONZE, Wayne,
esteinberg9 BRONZE, Wayne,
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Packing a suitcase. That’s it.
Frantically playing the “let’s cover every square foot of visible carpet with clothes” game and successfully doing so in less than 20 minutes--yes, that’s it. Do I need two outfits for every day, will I be able to fit that many outfits, should I just re-wear a few? Common questions for any type of flyer: regular, sporadic, even a first timer. But maybe it’s all the security regulations.
  Specifically, liquid container restrictions...defiantly, that’s it.
Why must every liquid we bring have to be no more than 3.0 fluid ounces. We all know how far that much of anything gets us; 3.0 fluid ounces, otherwise known as two handfuls of shampoo (not forgetting the sly and sneaky theft occurances from our siblings), will supply us with two nights tops of thorough cleaning. Come on security regulations, that’s not enough! Do they really want us to bring five shampoo containers through their scanning machines just so they have to stop us and make sure we’re not doing anything illegal--is wanting clean, fresh hair really such a crime? And who decided that 3.0 was the right number of ounces? Probably someone with extremely unkempt hair… or a bald guy.
  No no, wait I’ve got it. Parking at the airport, for sure.
“B-12, don’t forget it, engrave that into your head, live it, love it, B-12 is the only B you see,” most likely said by one of our parents prior to getting on the bus to the actual airport. As if the corny rhyme they create isn’t enough of an attempt to aid us in remembering, the valuable letter-number combination is written on the parking ticket card which someone will eventually lose anyway. The whole experience wouldn’t be complete without a little chaotic 6 am jog (or chase) to the bus that we always miss anyway. Then upon entering the bus we so graciously receive snares from snobby organized people who were probably waiting for the bus like all organized people do.
  People. That’s the ultimate one. That is it.
A challenge in itself is walking down the aisle on the plane, always too small to fit ourselves and the bag we’re carrying which results in accidental bag slaps across the face (saying sorry with each one until realizing no one’s awake or alert enough to notice). Then after walking what seems like half a mile to a seat that’s always the last or second to last, we are welcomed with a grumpy old man or a crying baby. Spectacular. And we’re usually blessed with either a sick or snoring person on the way home.
  Oh hold on, I almost forgot about the landing.
Or maybe I should say the questionable dive into the ground that always ends with, again, a crying baby and usually a clapping crowd. Are we all clapping because the pilot did what he was supposed to do? Should we clap every time a taxi driver drops us off at our destination? Or every time the grocery store worker gives us our correct change back? “Thank you so much! You’ve done exactly what you’ve been paid to do, keep doing you!” I think not. At this point we all just want to go home.
  But actually, it’s finding the car after the vacation.
It’s 8 degrees, 11 pm and we all want no more than to find the precious golden carriage that will take us back home. Now we start panicking and shortly after we hear, “my corny rhyme isn’t so stupid anymore is it?”, B-12, someone remembers--now we only have frostbite and an entire car ride of bickering over a letter-number combination. Yes, that’s it.


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