A zoo from the twilight zone

Atlanta airport is a trip in itself. The place is a zoo. Specially when you have to spend four hours there waiting on your connecting flight to Tucson.

It becomes a strange limbo land, a world all of its own.

It knows how to magnify the lag after an eight-hour flight and play tricks with your brain.

It takes a while for you to realise that throughout the entire airport they are pumping out weird jazz muzak that makes you feel like you are trapped inside somebody else’s surreal dream.

With four hours to kill, you explore the different terminals and see what each one has offer.

It’s like walking through a city.

You nibble.

You get a coffee.

You sample the cuisine.

After the first hour you realise you are going to be broke at this rate.

So you hustle the security and try and talk your way into one of the VIP members lounges.

Perhaps you can find a corner in there to snooze in. Your Irish charm is working.

After two refusals, on the the third lounge you are granted permission to enter… for a small fee.

You go to find a cash machine but get distracted by a chiropractor stall and have the sudden urge to get your back cracked.

The lady at the desk introduces herself as Doctor Pops. She is friendly, but harsh. Insulting you, but with a smile.

You try the Irish charm again, but this time the Jedi mind trick doesn’t work.

She doesn’t like the cut of you gib – that much is very clear.

And now it’s too late.

You can’t turn back.

You are already on the table and she takes great delight in twisting your body into all kinds of shapes, grabbing your neck and yanking it this way and that, cracking every bone in your body.

You leave in a twisted mess.

She did damage, and she knows it.

You still pay her the 80 dollars and tip well, because you are frightened of Doctor Pops, if that is her real name.

You limp away, broken and abused.

You’ve spent all your cash and you need major body work, and you’ve only been here two hours.

Two more to go.

You’re only halfway there, and it already feels like you’ve lived here your entire life.

You decide not to spend another penny.

You stumble around, that weird jazz music haunting your every step.

You come across the strangest display, locked up in a large cabinet like a piece of fine art.

It is a hundred or more lunchboxes, all dating from the 1920s until the present day.

It’s like glimpsing into your childhood when you spot some that you once had as a kid.

Superman, the Incredible Hulk, Mork and Mindy, Alf, Star Wars, Knight Rider, and more…

You get pangs of nostalgia as the eye moistens and you find yourself standing in the middle of Atlanta airport getting weepy over old lunchboxes.

What is it with this place?

It’s a damn zoo from the twilight zone.

An announcement comes over the speakers and it’s time to board the plane.

Hallelujah.

Get me outta here.

But after spending so long in that airport, you never noticed yourself becoming slowly institutionalised.

And when you are finally on your seat and the plane is departing, you already kinda miss the place.