International Traveller

What makes for an international traveller? How do you decide when you are one? What is the golden metric?

Is it when your ears no longer pop? Is it when the rushing of the wind, the lurching of the plane as it jumps off the ground, and into the big blue sky, when that becomes second nature? Is it when every time you feel turbulence, you do not pray to the gods above, or the devils below, depending on what direction you would like to take? Is it when you can see just as clearly in the dim, poorly lit cabins as you do in the sunlight of the ground below? Is it when the smell of cabin food stops tasting delicious precisely because you are thousands of feet in the air, and this unnatural situation for your species has ceased to play tricks with your mind? Is it when your tongue tastes ash when you have that food? Or is it when you walk just as well on the carpeted floors, past the neon, bright, exit signs as a duck on water?

I like to think that i have travelled a lot. My passport remains safe, tucked inside my inside pockets. I double and triple and quadruple check my passport and boarding passed and baggage tags every time i pass a point where i have to present them. Oh, where is my passport. There. Let me pull it out and see. Is it mine? Yes. ok. Back in, you go. Wait, when i was taking it out, i did not lose my boarding passes, did i? They didn’t slip out, did they? Ok, never mind. I have OCD when it comes to things like this. Does not mean i am not a well-versed traveller. After the Great Thanksgiving Debacle of 2015, i have not missed a single flight. Is that metric enough? Probably not, no.

Is it the thing i do where i think i’m really smart? When i just let everyone board, and then walk up to the counters, #nolines. Or does the other thing i do, make it the opposite? Does the fact that i pack really heavy make me a newbie traveller still? Even after all these years.

What makes for an international traveller? How do you go about with determining such a thing.

Is it the people who have their hair pulled back, and are wearing baggy sweatpants for maximum comfort? Is it those who wear suits, tied down to the old ways, but what if they feel good in who they are by what they wear? Is it people like me who wear comfortable jeans and tees. A nice jacket over, to make it look like there was effort involved. Is it those who not have backpacks, but instead have compact suitcases that they roll along with them, and let sit by their sides, instead of fidgeting under the weight like i do. What makes for an international traveller? I guess we may never know. The one thing that is certain is that i will always wear my lucky chess socks when travelling.