Odd Days: Nora Ephron, where are you?

I'm on my way to Bellingham. More travel. That's a good thing. I still love to travel in spite of the fact that I have to arrive at the Denver airport earlier than ever. As you know, I am an "opt-out." So I have to allow time for my own personal hands-on body search. Furthermore, Denver hardly ever puts a shortcut through the security line, even when there are only 10 people in the entire airport. That means you have to traverse about .5 miles of switchbacks to get to the guy who shines a flashlight on your driver's license. But I digress.

Travel is more relaxed for me now that I'm old(er). Because I frequently traveled by myself when I was young, I occasionally had to deal with unwanted boorish behavior on the part of men in airports. Sometimes they were drunk-ish, sometimes not. Many were persistent in pressing their attentions on me and would be mystified and sometimes outraged by a dismissal of those attentions.

But now I am not approached by young(ish) men at airports anymore. In fact young men don't flirt with me at all -- unless they are angling for a tip. I'm not sure when I first noticed this, but probably later than I should have.

If anyone flirts with me these days, he is most likely a half generation or more older than I. Lots of my clients flirt with me. Of course they might be angling for tips, too. In any case, a fellow who flirts with me is likely to be sitting in a wheelchair, so I feel confident I can escape if the old coot gets too crazy.

So there I was, a relaxed traveler, minding my own business when this (sort of) old guy sits next to me and starts chatting me up. He looked harmless so I chatted back. After a while, there was a pause in his chatter. He was looking at me intently and I could see him screwing up his courage. He says, "So...." And I'm thinking, oh great, now he's going to ask me if I'm married or something. Finally he spits it out, "So, are you still working or are you retired?" Wow, isn't that flattering!