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Last Saturday night around 11:47 pm in the desolate Hartford, Connecticut Airport, I sprawled out on a couch as unselfconsciously as if I was sleeping, snoring, and gasping in my own bed. I was all strapped in by my sleep apnea mask and humming machine, twisting unsuccessfully to get as comfortable as I could considering the couch was harder than concrete and curved in the shape of a backward S.
Despite these hazardous conditions, I was hallucinating in my dreams about the Wake Forest football victory over UConn earlier that day. A scene I relived was me yapping in Silly’s face about the final minute counting down on the scoreboard with Wake ahead and our QB taking a knee after knee – as if genuflecting to football gods – to keep that clock headed towards zero cuz UConn already had blow-torched all their timeouts.
I thought about how overly comfortable and socially unaware I must have looked like. It took me back some 30 years when someone took a picture of me napping mid-afternoon on a slanted grassy hill in Bath, England with my shirt pulled up and my belly showing, totally unconcerned with what someone might not like about it.
Picture a full-on, uninhibited sprawl in that dark airport with my head resting on my computer bag full of pointed extension plugs. Didn’t mind the cranial discomfort because Wake Forest had won early that day so nothing else – including reputational damage or etiquette – mattered. Besides no one in Hartford knows me except Mac and he was in bed back at his house where earlier he threw a post-game party for the Wake fellas who road-tripped to the game. At that gig we wolfed down barbecue, hambabies, pecan cookies, and tangy baked beans while listening to my new hit rap song: “Don’t Be Callin’ Us Salamanders. We Are the Washington Commanders.”
No one asked to hear it and I got the sense no one wanted to hear it. They were fine with the tunes being played but I wanted to self-promote the song to a captive audience because so far it hasn’t gone viral which was the intent in producing it in the first place so I could become rich and retire.
Today I was imagining what would have happened had a night security guard noticed me all extended on the couch, which he could have told me was unsightly and would have been justified for pointing that out. The real question, though, was whether he would have told me the sleep apnea mask was a bridge too far, you know, inappropriate for using in a public place. I wondered if he would have given me a citation for indecent exposure.
If I were him, I would have told me I was not allowed to lounge on the couch as if I was lying in bed with no one around to see me like I had in Bath. If I was to lie around I had to be more decorous about how I did so, respectful of those around me such as him who didn’t want to look at me looking the way I did.
Or my encounter with this authority figure could have gone down another path. Maybe he uses a sleep apnea machine and we would have gone into the pros and cons of different brands who make the machines. Maybe we would have done some back-of-the-envelope SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) on which sleep apnea machines we should invest in next.
For some reason that discussion didn’t happen.
Anyway, at 3:30 am I woke up to the sounds of dozens of people arriving for the 6:00 am flights. Didn’t know airports got packed at 3:30 am but apparently it’s true.
I got up but kept my sleep apnea mask on as I went through the TSA line. Handed the official my boarding pass and driver’s license, which didn’t raise any suspicions.
But the mask did.
“Is this some sort of joke?” he asked. “You think this is Halloween or something?”
“No sir, I’m just happy because Wake Forest football won yesterday so I wanted to keep my mask on because it makes me look like a football player; I feel as if I played in the game and contributed to the victory. See look at my hat. It says WF which stands for Wake Forest, Wally Ferguson, Wendy Fuller, and Winning Football.”
“Oh yeah, I read about Wally and Wendy in the Sammy Sportface blog this weekend,” the officer said. “So are you Sammy Sportface?”
“Sho am.”
“But your driver’s license says you’re Charles Hartley.”
“I’m both.”
“We can’t let you on board if you have two names. Step aside. We need to further investigate. I’ve got a suspicious feeling about you. You got a lot of never claiming to be two different people to a TSA officer.”
“Tell you what, if I show you how to sign up for the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Facebook Page, will you let me slide?”
“That would be awesome,” the officer said. “I can’t do without my daily dose of Sammy Sportface.”
From there I took off all my clothes except for the sleep apnea mask, boarded the plane, and walked into my house with the mask still on, having been a key player in Wake Forest improving its record to 3 and 4.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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