I am a “get to the airport 2 hours early” type of guy. 

I grew up traveling with my parents, who are get to the airport a week before your flight kind of people. 

As an adult, having done quite a bit of travel with two children under seven, I get it now. You have to be prepared for the bathroom breaks, the frustrations, and teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown at all times. And we are in the age of iPhones, tablets, and screens on the plane with a suite of movies, shows, and games.

The travel I did as a child pre-dates those things. 

This isn’t an “it was different back in my day” rant. 

Getting to the airport early in the nineties as a kid meant you were in for some next-level boredom. There are only so many connect-the-dots you can do. I’d inhale the treats my Mom packed in my backpack to help with the pressure change (gum, orange Tic-Tacs, LifeSavers, etc.) before we boarded the plane. I had no interest in watching CNN on the silent airport TVs.

Things got better when I leveled up to bringing a Gameboy and Discman.

However, having a Discman meant you must bring CDs along as well. 

One year, a friend gave me a hand-me-down case that could hold up to 120 CDs. I had less than half that amount, but I can’t describe how cool I felt the first time I brought that CD holder through the airport. 

On the inside, the CDs were held in plastic trays, like the cases they were sold in. It made the most satisfying noise when you paged through, deciding whether to listen to Ace of Base, Alanis Morisett, or Jock Jams Vol 1. Click-clack, click-clack.

The outside of the case was a hard plastic that closed with a plastic locking mechanism rather than a zipper. 

You must know that when I entered the airport with my parents, hours before the flight, it was time to move like we would miss our flight. The idea was to avoid being any sort of inconvenience to the other travelers around us. Whether we were waiting to get boarding passes, going through security, or walking to the gate, any misstep was met with one of the top punishments my Dad doled out. “The Look,” as it has been named in our family, was a sudden change in my Dad’s facial expression. He used it to let us know that he would go to extreme lengths to teach us a lesson if we weren’t in public.

Of course, I cannot remember when my Dad got even close to laying a hand on me in the name of punishment. However, that fact didn’t matter as “the look” drilled into your brain and let you imagine a profanity-laced trip behind the proverbial wood shed. 

The pressure turned up when it was time to board the plane. The stress would turn up a notch. Something about a line behind my Dad spiked his anxiety. Knowing this, I did my best to go unnoticed by all around me. 

When it came time to board the plane my first time with my new CD carrying case, I switched to a new CD as we got up to get in line. 

Everything went smoothly until my arm snagged on my headphone cord, pulling it out of the Discman. I was walking behind my parents, so I took a moment to plug my headphones back in. After a bit of fumbling, music started playing again. I put a little hop in my step to close the gap between myself and my parents. My increased pace was more than the plastic lock on my CD case could handle. Halfway down the jetway, the case opened, and twenty CDs fell out, scattering in all different directions. 

I dropped to my knees, scrambling to pick up the CDs from the course-thin carpet as quickly as I could without smudging or, God forbid, scratching the discs. I could see the feet of the line forming behind me. I felt the blood rush to my face. My heart pounded in my ears. It was time to face the music after all the CDs were back in the case. I stood and turned to see “the look.” 

I deserved it.

We all have moments as adults when we catch ourselves behaving like our parents. The combination of genetics and learned behavior is sometimes impossible to overcome. 

Because of this, I have spent most of my life anxiously arriving at airports too early and rushing for no reason. 

My wife, Jenni, usually has enormous patience for me. 

I am confident I am given this grace because she has also traveled with my parents and witnessed the controlled chaos firsthand. 

In high school, she joined us on a trip to visit my sister in Maryland and spend a day in New York City. On that trip, it didn’t take more than a hundred yards for the stress level to rise to an unreasonable level. 

My parents started, err, discussing correctly navigating the route from the parking ramp to the baggage check.

We followed along, quietly laughing at their back-and-forth while naively thinking we would never be like that. 

Ah, to be young. 

We reached the boiling point heading up an escalator. My Dad was confident he was doing the correct thing by going up. My Mom wasn’t so sure, although she only voiced this once we headed up the escalator. This led to a loud, umm, debate being volleyed from the top to the bottom of the escalator.

Stuck in the middle, Jenni and I decided to match the pace of the escalator, waiting to see who would be the victor. We did our best to stay halfway between the two so as not to show allegiance to either of the parties involved inadvertently. 

I cannot recall which direction was correct, but we did make it to the flight in plenty of time.

Despite bearing witness to this early in our relationship, we are not immune to our airport debates. 

As a matter of fact, on July 19, 2019, we came as close to a divorce as we ever have in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. 

We were headed to upstate New York for our summer vacation. 

Sweat poured from my forehead in the Park’ N Fly parking lot as I worked to get both car seats out of the car in time to catch the shuttle. The shuttle parked directly behind my vehicle. A shuttle filled with people waiting to get to the airport, watching me. Suddenly, it was as if I had never taken a car seat out of a car. Panic started to rise.

“Take your time; we’re fine,” my wife said as I swore at the car seats under my breath.

We’re fine. We’re fiiiine. Easy to say that when you’re not taking the car seats out in an oven, I thought to myself.

Eventually, the car seats were removed from the car, and we got on the shuttle and made it to the terminal. Of course, the kiosks allowing you to print your bag tags were not working. We were forced to get in a ridiculously long bag check line with our 3-year-old and 7-month-old—somehow, it was more hot and humid inside than outside. 

When traveling with two children under three, checking bags doesn’t lighten the load as much as you might think. We got through security with four carry-ons, a car seat, a stroller, and a diaper bag. 

You should know that when Jenni announces she is hungry, it means she needs to eat immediately. 

I knew this at the time. I knew I had mere minutes before Jenni became “hangry.”

There is a grab-and-go-style restaurant as you enter the G concourse in the MSP airport. 

“Let’s get some food before we go to the gate,” Jenni said.

“Why don’t we go to the gate first? Then we can come back and get some food,” I said, thinking gathering food without two children, four carry-on bags, a car seat, a stroller, and a diaper bag would be easier. 

Logic is ineffective against Jenni’s “hanger.”

If we could survive without food, Jenni and I would never fight. 

We whisper-fought in the busy airport concourse. Neither of us wanted to become a spectacle to people passing while simultaneously wanting to win the fight. I’m sure we were simultaneously recalling the escalator battle of 2002 somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds.

We got the food before going to the gate, of course. We walked to the gate separately. Jenni didn’t allow us to get within thirty feet of each other. All of the seats were taken when we got to the gate, so we were forced to sit on the floor of the hot concourse. Jenni wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. When I tried to talk to her, she behaved as though I didn’t exist.

There was a brief moment I thought my marriage was over. 

It wasn’t until we were flying over Michigan that she acknowledged my existence. I’m confident the sole reason was so I could take this picture of our daughter on her first flight.

Since then, we I have become much more relaxed when entering an airport. Though, thanks to the Delta Sky Club, I will always be the guy who gets to the airport way too early. 

I also have inherited “the look” from my Dad. I do it often, especially to my son in public places. It feels like I look like my Dad when I do it, but I’ll never know because the kid in me doesn’t dare to look in the mirror and see it. 

Cheers.