posers

This weekend I flew to another funeral for another one of M's friends that was killed a couple of weeks ago. It was a really beautiful service and I am so glad I was able to attend to honor his life and bravery. He was an amazing man and he will be greatly missed. It was a short trip, just one day. I flew there at 9 am and got a return flight at 5 pm.

Flying is not one of my favorite things to do, but I seem to do it a lot. I normally have panic attacks and have to distract myself with music or reading and I do a lot of breathing exercises. One thing I have found that always works to distract me is to people watch. I LOVE to people watch. Ask anyone. Give me a seat on a bench in a busy mall or a seat in a busy area of an airport and I will be happy for hours. People are weird and I love to watch their weirdness.

The city that I was flying in and out of was once a popular tourist destination, but has since been replaced by brighter lights and bigger hotels in another city nearby so it's not exactly where the well off go to party. Lets just say there were fanny packs and tapered pants a plenty and that combined with a lot of cheap beer made for prime people watching. Fanny packs aside, there was one woman in particular that really stood out to me. She thought she was aaaaaaaaaaalllll that. And a bag of chips.

This woman was probably in her late 40's and looked like she got in a fight with a BeDazzler and lost. There were more rhinestones and studs on that woman than I have ever seen on one person, even two people, for that matter. She had 4 huge gold rings on both hands, 4 big gold bracelets and a watch on her left arm, her black pants were studded down the sides, she had a studded belt on, her shirt had rhinestones along the collar and sleeve cuffs and even her shoes had stones on them. But lets talk about her glasses because they were the most bedazzling of all. Think: Sylvia Weinstock and add a disco ball. The sides of these HUGE black glasses were completely covered in silver rhinestones. Ah.Maz.Ing.

I first noticed her because I heard her cackle (yes, cackle, not laugh) as she was talking to someone on her phone. I'm just lucky she wasn't sitting under a bright light when I saw her because my eyes needed time to adjust and I surely would have been blinded by all of her embellishments if I had looked straight at her. Her phone in itself would have been enough to blind me, as it too was BeDazzled with bright red rhinestones.

She was talking to one of her friends, who was apparently named "Hun", about how her driver had made her walk 1/2 a block through the rain that morning because he was too stupid to drive through the flooded street to pick her up at her door and how she hoped he wasn't as much of an idiot when he picked her up after she landed. She kept saying "my driver" over and over and over, like she has a personal chauffeur or something. Then she started talking about how she needed to go to the City to do some shopping at the kind of stores most people never go into because they wouldn't even be able to purchase a sock there. She was talking so loud that we could all hear what she was saying and I still haven't figured out if she was doing on purpose or not, to make everyone think that she was totally rich.

There was this huge disconnect though because she couldn't have been that rich. She was flying on Southwest for goodness sake! If I was loaded, that would be the last airline I would be flying on. Even better though was when we landed at our destination, and I was walking to my car, she was in front of me and I saw her "driver" and car. It was one of those airport shuttle vans that costs like $15 each way. Not exactly the Lincoln I was expecting her to get into.

This just reminds me of the time I went to IKEA and was walking next to a couple who brought their pug in on a red velvet pillow. I always wondered why they were shopping at IKEA. That is not where the wealthy tend to shop, and I sure don't know of any middle class American that carries their dog on a red velvet pillow. Maybe that is common though and I don't get out enough to see it?

Maybe these people were really rich and they got rich from saving money by shopping at box stores for their furniture and flying on the crappiest airline known to man. But I really doubt that. I'm going to wage my bets on the fact that they are posers. I won't judge though. Whatever you gotta do to get your kicks is fine by me. Heck, it provides me with tons of entertainment so have at it!