After landing in Dallas, I gathered up my luggage because for whatever reason, lately, I’m overpacking on every trip.  Why I had enough to fill up my medium suitcase for a 48 hour excursion … I don’t know … at least I had options. So I waited for my bright blue bag listening to two CUTE kids squealing and running as Grandma came through the revolving door toward baggage claim.

Now, my luggage is bright blue because I thought it would be easier to spot on the baggage claim belt.

Wrong.

It seems bright blue is the new black.  Everyone either has a black or bright blue suitcase nowadays.  I refuse to put curly ribbons on my luggage so I will have to figure something else out the next time I decide to overpack.

Luggage finally in hand, I got on the shuttle to the DFW “combined” rental car center. And when I say I “got on” that means that I stood at the curb, threw my bag in and before all the screaming stopped I hurtled my body through the doors and grabbed on to anything that wasn’t screaming.

We were packed in there like sardines. It was amazing.

I told the pretty lady in the green track suit she didn’t have to apologize for bumping against me every time the bus turned a corner or hit a bump in the road because, “it’s ok, we are all in this together.”

Then a voice came to me from three feet away and two feet down.  It arose from a petit older woman with a smoker’s voice, smelled like smoke, grey roots with blond dyed hair and a seriously purple short sleeved blouse.

She said:

We are all in this together but why does it have to be so painful?  I have bionics in my arms.

I said

Bionics?

She said

Yep.

I then asked her if she could lift cars.  No, she assured me that it wasn’t quite like that.  Then I asked if she was ever taken over by slow motion and hear that metallic “nahnahnahnah” sound that the first Bionic Woman had to put up with?  She said, “uh … no.”  Green track suit lady was smiling.

Earlier when I said that I threw myself and the luggage into the bus, I was being hyperbolic.  However, I really did ask this lady those questions about the bionics.  She said they were computer chips that helped her with her pain … and she had a remote control for them.  This remote control hung from a purple case that matched her blouse so well I didn’t even see it until she went for the remote.  She took it out, pointed it at her rear-end and said, “that’s how I adjust the bionics.”

I was like, “ok… I hope they are helpful.”  She said that they were.  Then she wouldn’t stop talking.  God bless her but I think she had a bionic mouth too.  And the shuttle ride was so long I thought they were driving us to Oklahoma City to pick up the cars.  About halfway through, with all the stress of traveling halfway across the country, being packed in a shuttle with a bunch of football fans (Utah vs TCU was that weekend) and driving halfway across the state with said football fans, a pretty track suit lady who didn’t feel the need to hold on to the hand rail to steady herself and the aging bionic woman… I almost asked her if she had a spare cigarette.

When the doors finally opened and we all just kind of fell out with our bright blue and black luggage.  I wished her well as she bionically jumped ahead of us all. I then realized that she had turned toward the same car rental counter I was headed toward.  I ended up in line, oh about … 20 deep (not kidding on this one either) right behind her.

As I looked down into her grey roots and smelled that “oh she is very much a smoker” smell … compassion rose up in me.  Here is a lady God knows intimately.  A lady who feels it necessary to tell strangers that she has remote controlled bionics in her arms.  I lady who smoked so much it had changed her voice. A voice the Lord wants to hear call out to Him.  My earlier, “please be quiet” attitude disappeared.  I tapped her on the shoulder and with an honest smile said, “Hello again …”

We talked the entire time we waited in line.

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Tags: cute, God, Hair, Honest, Hope, Humor, Kids, Life, Listening, Rental Car, Running, Travel

This entry was posted on November 16, 2009 at 5:28 pm and is filed under God, Life, People, Travel, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.