Airports are NOT Casinos

I have a friend who believes that airports are like casinos. She's never actually been to a casino, but she's heard enough to know that there are no clocks, they are loud, bright and constantly in motion. There are clocks in airports, but you generally have to search for the time on the bottom of the monitors, and so I'll give her that point, since you'd have to get up and go look for the time if you needed to know and didn't have a watch or cell phone (or a friend with a watch or cell phone).

But, according to my friend, the most important similarity is that because of the constant motion and people and lights, you are automatically awake in both environments, even if it's the middle of the night.

I am here to say that is just not true. In fact, it's so not true that I almost missed my flight last night. I closed my eyes for a little while, wasn't actually asleep, but definitely lost track of time for long enough to open my eyes when the plane was nearly fully boarded. Had I had interesting people to watch, or slot machines to play, maybe I may have been able to force myself to be wide awake, but really, there's only a very, very small chance of that.

Airports are loud, and there are too many people, but it's not enough to keep you (or me) awake in the middle of the night. At least at a casino the people are interesting to watch - especially in the middle of the night.

And in case anyone is wondering, there were no celebrities on my flight that I could tell, at least not from my middle seat way in the back of the plane.