Chasing Jimmy Buffett on the Far Side of the World: November, 2008

Flying home doesn't have to be drudgery. When we arrived at the airport, Julie did some reading while Amy and I played cards. When Amy was five, I read about a French card game called Casino that the aristocracy played hundreds of years ago. It had very simple rules, so we learned quickly, and we would play in the morning before I took her to school. As part of the tradition, we would listen to an Andrea Bocelli album as we played. I don't know why, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Amy and I played a few rounds of Casino, and the next thing we knew, it was time to board the short flight to Paris. Julie had used frequent flyer miles, and trying to match her flight to ours would have cost several hundred dollars, so she would follow us to Paris an hour later to board the same flight to LAX.

When Amy and I arrived in Paris, we couldn't help but notice some wildy dressed characters in the security check line. They wore obvious disguises, some with brightly colored wigs and one guy with a long, Hassidic beard and dreadlocks.

At first, like everyone else we tried to resist the urge to stare, which is one reason such wild disguises might work. Catching longer glimpses, however, it became obvious that these people weren't simply avant garde; they were intentionally dressed to be off the charts odd. How could they get through security, since their passports obviously wouldn't match their appearances? We decided they must be celebrities, and since they were six men, we reasoned they were a rock band of some kind.

Then it hit us. The Hassidic dreadlocks guy was Jimmy Buffett.

Okay, we have no proof, but we decided to try to find him in the airport, since we had an hour to kill before Julie would get there.

We eventually found him in a smoking lounge, although he wasn't smoking. He went out to make a phone call, and we eavesdropped. He sure sounded like Jimmy Buffett.

We sat down a short distance away, and when he left to walk to his waiting area, I did my best Cosmo Kramer imitation and yelled, “Jimmy.”

He didn't turn around, but I did notice him kind of instinctively pause when he heard his name.
Okay, enough of confessing our stalking of Jimmy Buffett. We meant him no harm. We were just killing time by creating an adventure.

Note: He may not have been Jimmy Buffett, but thinking he was made the time go by in a humorous fashion. Until Jimmy Buffett tells me the strange stranger wasn't him, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.