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Once you step foot on the grounds of an airport, no matter what state or country, you leave your nominal location and enter a not-so-new foreign realm.  The rules of every day life are changed.  Courtesy and expectations are jilted thirty seven degrees from your normal reference.  Reality melds with a Terry Gilliam script in a way that ensures your sanity is tested.

Airports and airplanes have their own economic system that is as arbitrary as it is confusing.  Water is more expensive than coffee, but the latter requires an equal amount of the former.  Both are free when you are sitting.  A meal at a national fast food restaurant is the exact same price as the sit-down spot next door.  Legs of the flightplan are bundled together to save money, but delays force you to deviate from the schedule and purchase a different ticket and a meal while you wait, unless you paid the equivalent of the extra fees at the time of the original purchase in order to secure you flight and fare.  Ticket prices are tied to roulette wheels and are about as predictable.

There are social classes and ethnic groups of a unique sort: First-Classians, Coachonians, Suspicious-ese, Omygodnotanotherscreamingbaby-Americans.  Everyone becomes tribal and territorial and ready to throw social norms to wind at the slightest provocation or elbow infringement.  Nerves fray due to the geopolitical pressures of the just-a-bit-bigger than his seat man nodding off and prodding the cell phone diva next to the upper middle class housewife barbing the college bro who is shaking my seat every time I just enter the sleep cycle.  It is a surprise there are so few outbursts of rage in the friendly skies.

Various airports mirror the regions of a medieval map.  Beware the long cold valley of Minneapolis International, and prepare yourself for the island archipelago that is LAX.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter ATL, for the Terror of the Tram awaits!  Step away from the Doors, for they do NOT rebound or spring back!  Enjoy the bright, sterile canyons of O'Hare, and marvel at the petite swiftness of your non-hub local airport.

This great frontier of lawlessness and strife can be negotiated safely and with aplomb.  Pack wisely, and use your faculties of common sense and courtesy.  Wear clothes that breathe, for you own sake and mine.  Hotels have all the toiletries you may forget.  And for the love of god, try to remember the size of that little carry-on basket.  Your forty pound roller will not fit and just make the rest of us miss our connections while you argue with the stewardess.