In the thirty years that have past, pretty much everything has changed but that travertine floor, make a mental note of that for later.
O.k. so it's the Summer of 76, I'm 15 year old kid heading home for Summer vacation in the States.
Lady in front of me is next up to bat, she prepares her carry-on adjusts her purse. The ticket agent waives her forward, she dutifully genuflects to grab her largest piece of luggage and advance to the counter.
She *could cover this cordoned-off, no-mans expanse of smooth, cool, polished Indiana Limestone in 6 easy steps, then she'd be at the counter, the agent would stamp her ticket, weigh her bag and she'd be on her way....
But that's not what's gonna happen today.
The lady in the Pin-striped 'Power Business' suit of 1976, with the blonde medium hair-cut, but no Farrah Bang-Wings, -this lady's hair was styled more like Sabrina Duncan's the "Smart Angel". She takes one, two, three steps... Then as she lifts her shoulders to place her carry-on atop the counter, the weight visibly shifts, her bag doesn't exactly topple, as much as bobble, and as she over corrects it's weight distribution. For one specific period of time, an extremely large, black, dildo becomes weightless and has migrated from the one and only corner of the carry-on where the zipper is puckered and unzipped. The Dildo is free now, and it seems to have a fair amount of momentum.
The crowd, -at first startled by the pretty womans struggle with the bag, now looks on dreamily, -in a sort of dazed hypnotic astonishment, -as if she were playing a flute and this were a hooded Cobra rising up from her bag.
Surely, time had slowed down at this point, because, as this thing sprang loose from the carry-on bag, the end-cap shot straight-up into the air, like a champaign cork and that great beastie of a thing was spring loaded with big-ass blue & yellow "D-size" Ray-O-Vac Bat'rees, the ones with that had the 9-lives cat on 'em.
And the whole works did a lazy slow-motion 180 the Batteries were ejected to the upright position this thing was like a roman candle 1, 2, 3 of them shot out, the crowd drew back, forearms raised, a 4th shot out and then the huge rubber snake lie there on the stark white floor shuddering first, and then it assumed th form of an inanimate object, -at least as inanimate as a jet-black gigantic gelatinous Penis shaped thng can be.
Worse, each of the yellow and blue Ray-O-Vac paper-wrapped Batteries were now slowly rolling away from the Pan-Am counter towards the expanse of Windows some 60 yards away, demonstrating the perfectly angled pitch of the floor, they rolled at just slower than walk speed, giving passers by plenty of time to step out of their way.
The lady in the Pin-striped 'Power Business' suit, -as quickly as she could, -for time had also slowed down for her as well. -Reached down to snatch up the hujongously massive black-as-coal schlong and immediately tried to stuff it back into the carry-on bag, but without the batteries, the thing was too gelatinous she would get the end of it in and then it would just fold up, she eventually opened her bag and made room, to stretch it out flat. This imagery was not lost on the crowd either.
A sweet little girl had gone and retrieved the On/Off battery cap at the end and given it to the nice Lady in the Pin-striped 'Power Business' suit who tucked the cap in her bag, zipped it up grabbed her ticket book, thanked the agent and went on her way.
I've regaled this story a dozen times, but there's one thing I never tell...
If there were 150 people within eye-shot then there were at least 50 people that saw the whole thing. and of the 50 of them, at least half of 'em knew exactly what was going on.
But there wasn't even a single snicker, no guffaws, titters, which is why to this day, whenever I fly, I -Never- and I mean NEVER fail to pack the biggest Blackest dildo I can find.
I figure, no matter WHAT happens to you while flying, if you look like you are about to get into and embarrassing situation of any kind, all you have to do is "accidentally" let the dildo clatter to the floor, BRILLIANT!
For real though.. She was probably just buying it as a gag gift for a friend.
(This is a true story, and related pretty much exactly as it happened)
This only barely makes my top 10 "Airport" stories, I just thought I've already got the short blocked out in my mind. steady-cam for the 1stP POV, boom for the long-shot. Dolly shot for the rolling batteries.. Gotta love it. $15,000 three-days, you got the Mother of all European Battery Commercials. "Hapi-Jus"!
