I'm at SFO waiting for my flight to Seattle. I decided to kill some time and fight my hunger with a chicken soft taco. Always soft. And just get one, don't want to eat too much and get fat. Always worried about these things. I wish I could just take a bite. I eat my taco in an exaggerated hunch back position. It is not a stretch to imagine me eating out of a bowl. The meat is good, a bit too artificially flavored, but for airport food good. I get up from the table, leaving my tray, take a few steps, and then it dawns on me. I'm not in Beijing. Here it's rude not to pick up after yourself. So I spin back, grab my tray, and empty the remains in the trash. I still have 30 minutes to kill so I do the terminal walk. One end to the other. I touch the north end, turn around and come back. I cross a small shop stop and stop to look for gum. A 60ish dwarf of a woman is the cashier. She looks hard at me, I turn away and pretend to look at the magazines. She walks up to me and says "Vince, I can't believe it". She's excited and in her own way happy. I turn, at first pretending not to hear her, waiting for her to speak again. She does. "Vince, it's me, Tammie's Mom". I say, sorry, I don't know what you are talking about and I turn and leave. I reach the gate, my heart pounding. Why should I be so shocked? This was her job 25 years ago, and she's kept it. It just never dawned on me that I might see her again. And I can't get that image out of my mind, of when she was 35, and Tammie walked in on her having sex with a future ex-husband. Riding him, all 5' of her, the huge boobs bouncing. Stop it, I say, but my mind won't let go. I think back to that time, when Tammie used to work at the airport with her Mom, coming three days a week after school. At first I would pick her up after work and take her home but after a while it became a hassle, a fight with my parents to do it. So I stopped and she found another airport worker to take her home. A 42 year old father of two. And he was banging her within a month. And I think, this is how I am, so self absorbed with my own trials that I ignore those I supposedly care about and they go get their needs satisfied elsewhere. It's a pattern I repeat, over and over again. They announce my flight will be delayed by 2 hours. Yuck. What to do. I walk back to the small souvenir stop and when Tammie's Mom takes a break I buy her a cup of coffee. And we talk.