A Licensed Stranger

A stranger chasing me down in the world’s busiest airport

A Licensed Stranger

There were hustling people everywhere.  They were running from gate to gate, from hallway to train, up escalators and down.  The Atlanta’s Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the world.  On this day, there was no doubt about this, in my mind, and I began my trek through it after disembarking from the gate where I deplaned.  That’s when I checked the time to see how hard I had to swim to join the other salmon surging up stream.

Once in the stream, swimming along, I felt a sense of calm.  It wasn’t that it was less crowded.  It wasn’t.  Perhaps it was because going the with the flow is always easier than working to merge, and most certainly easier than trying to swim against the flow of seemingly spawning fish.  I swam down the escalator rapids and then entered the fish trap in the form of a train to transfer to a terminal, five stops away.  Swoosh, the doors closed and I was off.  Then the door opened again and I swam up another escalator rapids to join different stream.

That’s when things changed!  I had just risen to the top of the escalator and had walked, perhaps thirty feet when I heard someone trying to get my attention.  It was a little startling!  Everyone else was ignoring me as they just swam along.

“Excuse me.” The stranger said.  “Is this yours?”

I turned to look.  He, the stranger, was gasping while reaching toward me, with my driver’s license in his hand!  It had apparently fallen from my pocket as I removed my phone to check the twenty-eight messages that had accumulated during my air time.

“Thank you!” I replied, with heartfelt thanks.

He smiled and swam back into the stream, likely to never been seen by my eyes again.  I turned and swam the other way with the stream feeling somewhat warmer and much more inviting!

There were still hustling people everywhere.  They were still running from gate to gate, from hallway to train, up escalators and down.  The Atlanta’s Hartsfield was still the busiest airport in the world.  On this day, there was still no doubt in my mind about this as I continued my trek, after receiving my lost driver’s license from a complete stranger, whose largely unnoticed kindness gave me relief and warmed me to the core!