A Week of Shorts: In the TSA Line

He was a tall guy, older, hefty, wearing khaki pants and a baseball cap. She was small and so thin and spare that it looked like someone had dressed a Halloween skeleton in jeans and a plaid shirt for fun, cinching a leather belt tight around her doll’s waist.

He pulled a large rolling suitcase. She had one hand on the handle and the other on the cloth tape TSA puts up to keep people in the right lane. Each step was shaky, a risk, but he trudged on ever so slowly, gently pulling her along.

She stumbled and dragged like a child who had spent hours crying in her room alone. Halting and unsure but trusting the suitcase handle and the man in the khaki pants. He would take care of her. She seemed to know that.

I turned to my husband after watching the couple for a while. “Old people have a lot of true love.” He nodded and then we checked in for our flight.