Booking Through Thursday: Mayday!

This week's BTT question:
Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??
And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….

OK, in the first place, I would never go out grocery shopping with nothing but a wallet. I'm too girly for that (well, old girly). I would have my handbag or shoulder bag or some sort of purse type thing with me, and my phone (assuming I remembered to take it along) would be buried down under all the other junk I carry around.

And I'm not the sort of person who goes around with a cell phone permanently attached to my ear. In fact, I'm really not much of a phone person at all. To me, the telephone is mainly for conducting business and handling emergencies. Phone chatting is something I never really took to. Even as a teenager. Somehow, I find talking to a disembodied voice rather unsettling.

I know that's strange and disturbing and un-American, but there it is.

So the point here is – I would not be likely to hear the phone ringing while I was shopping. Whoever was delivering the news would probably have to call my home phone. I would get the message on my answering machine (yes, I still have an answering machine attached to a landline phone – and no, I don't remember VJ Day). I would get the message when I got home from the shopping. So I would definitely have a chance to grab a book on my way to the airport.

And then there's the whole problem of that phrase "family emergency." That sounds scary and I might not feel like reading if the emergency was too upsetting. I might just feel like spending the flight in a Vicodin haze.

But, since we're speaking hypothetically here . . . .

I can't imagine an airport without a book store or a newsstand, can you? So one never has to board a plane empty-handed, reading-matter-wise, does one? I'd buy a book! Probably a mystery novel, if I could find one. Or sci-fi. Something to take my mind off the family emergency and the fact that I was actually having to (oh, my God!) get on a plane.

And I'd probably buy several magazines as well – I find I do better on a plane flight if I'm reading something with lots of pictures to distract me. Otherwise, I spend too much time helping the pilot keep the plane in the air.