Flights to and from Phoenix

It never ceases to amaze me the disparities between cultures here in the United States. Flying to and from Phoenix this last weekend, Sky Harbor, Phoenix’s airport contains folks as diverse in style and attitudes as one might find in JFK or ORD. There are foreigners, East Coasties, Midwesterners, folks from the West and of course those tattooed and pierced from the “New West.” While traveling always offers great opportunities to see differences in cultures, those truly interesting components are reserved for what one can learn about her or himself at the destination.

This last Friday was my Grandma Phyllis’s birthday, the specific birthday that it was shall remain ageless, but let’s say that it was a milestone—one that required a special trip. What always amazes me, growing up in my family, are the things I learn growing further into my family. I say that, in that, growing up we continuously have an evolving perception of who our relatives are, and how they act as adults. Of course, as anyone that has grown up through these lives of ours can say, perceptions continuously evolve, and those things we learn about one another carry with them further dimension as we grow older through this life.

While I am quite sure that seems to be a rather odd, yet intuitive, stanza, methinks it’s the sort of component to life one can never truly comprehend until they have lived in this adult world for several years. What has me thinking in that direction, was seeing my Grandma this weekend, amongst my maternal family, all of the same folks whom went to Nicaragua for Christmas. The difference between this trip and Nicaragua was that it was in Phoenix, where my maternal aunts and grandparents live; therefore, it was more vacuous.1

Seeing my Grandmother there in Phoenix this weekend, I saw an incredibly vivacious woman, whom is joyful, intelligent, funny and well spirited. Grandma Phyllis looks years younger than whatever age she may be; her smile was bright and her eyes were lit up all weekend. What amazes me, among so many other things, is her involvement in the community in which she and my Grandfather live.

Not to brag on my Grandmother, or anything, but she is the chairperson of their board. No, this is not some Del Boca Vista-type organization, nothing of the sort. In short, what I am trying to say is that it is not a caddy club for ladies of the club, but a genuine Operational Organization, one which works to ensure the dining facilities are in good order, the security and the grounds are keeping the residents safe.

It’s noteworthy in that it dearly impresses me. Not that my Grandmother happens to be heading this board, no. Rather, the style and grace with which she speaks professionally about her involvement, particularly in casual conversations.

While I’ve managed to delve rather far into her work with her community’s Board, I should note the other component that did so much to impress me with her this weekend. My aunts, mom, grandma and I played a round of golf. Indeed I was playing with the ladies. As I arrived a day later than my folks, and it was surprise, my Granddad didn’t have the opportunity to book me with the “Bandits,” his golf team.

In that, I went joyously with the ladies, and we played a great round of golf. Again, playing golf, I couldn’t help but marvel at the terrific genes my Grandmother is bestowing on me, as her Grandson. Grandma looked terrific on the course, playing as youthfully as those of my mom’s generation or me.

Obviously, I could continue to go on about my Grandmother, but you’ve endured enough of my gushing on that. If you’ve made it this far, please humor me by reading about my complaints towards those here in the American West. Call me old fashioned, but I loathe ink and these odd spacers folks throw in their ears. Come on folks, hoop earrings are relatively obnoxious, even if one relegates them to something comical. I am lost on one throwing something like that in their ears. Certainly, if they are a Maori Tribeswoman or man, I could see it, but for middle class kids marching through the airport?

I think Phoenix Sky Harbor has to run right up there with John Wayne, PDX, SEATAC, or PDX for inordinate amounts of “sleeve” tattoos and/or spacer-ear hoops. No, I don’t have ink. I am not absolute against it. To a point, I get the “Tramp Stamp.”2 Those are not visible during the wearing of short-sleeves or during a job-interview. Sincerely, though, I have hard time understanding “sleeves.” One now sees them in places like Davenport, Iowa or Boise, Idaho, but there they are not so common, as what one sees in Phoenix.

Phoenix, outside of Scottsdale and Sun City, may be the USA’s capitol of “New West” absurdity. I use the word “absurd,” in that absurd body art applications, particularly the aesthetics for which folks are going seem as transient as the “Bad Boy Club” tattoos one saw in the mid-Nineties in my high school. The challenges for these faddish or transient designs are that they are permanent.

Sincerely, these tattoos so many out here, in what I’ve aptly referred to, in my own way, as the “New West,” don’t seem to have any overarching themes or points. I somewhat understand an eighteen-year-old enlisted in the Marines, tattooing him or herself with a “Semper Fi,” but come on a jelly fish or stingray? Can anyone envisage old men with their wives on the Lawn Bowling courts of Sun City in the year 2050?

I don’t get Phoenix. Is it elitism to find aesthetics disdainful? For me, it’s not a shriek or back-away, because I am afraid of ink or body art, no. Rather, it is a problem

1: As always, I have a tendency to use “bigger words.” By stating vacuous, I mean that Phoenix is a vacuum, in that it is in the States, and is the home to my Mom’s family. Therefore, it does not offer the instability of all of us traveling in Nicaragua. As such, it provided opportunity for more clinical observations.

2: “Tramp Stamp” - This is the tattoo on the small of a woman’s back, one which was probably obtained during a Spring Break to somewhere in Florida, California, or Mexico. That or it floated north from said “Spring Break Destinations,” into the near-the-mall-tattoo-parlors throughout the US.