All I wanted to say was that I didn't need a wakeup call.

My voice was gravelly, I could barely speak. It was 4:09 AM, when no sane person is awake. I just wanted to growl that I was awake and didn't need a wakeup call, and have someone growl back at me that they wouldn't bother me. (My expectations for customer service are not terribly high at 4:09 AM.)

Instead, I got one of the best phone voices I'd ever heard. It sounded like this person was born to answer the phone at the Four Points Sheraton in Romulus, Michigan, in the wee small hours of the morning. She sounded like the best thing someone could do for her was call her and ask her not to give them a wake up call.

I wondered for a moment how she did it. The overnight desk job at the Four Points in Romulus, Michigan is not exactly the most desirable of jobs. The person holding it probably has had a life of some hardships and some joy leading up to this job. And yet, despite it all, she sounded genuinely delighted to be talking to a bleary-eyed and grovelly voiced lawyer at 4:09 who didn't want a wake up call.

How'd she get there? And how did she sound so delighted to be doing her job?

She could write a book.

***

I packed my bags and stumbled downstairs. It's my experience that at 5 AM no one wants to be awake, let alone toting their bags around a hotel lobby. The airport shuttle wasn't there, so I settled into a couch in the lobby, planning to sit there in silence until transport arrived.

Into the lobby came two men who were obviously pilots and a few women who were flight attendants. It struck me that while I'm not happy to be traveling at such an ungodly hour, being expected to fly an airplane at this hour seems like something superhuman.

Despite looking alert and happy to be on their way to being back on the road, or more correctly, in the air, the pilots still seemed to acknowledge they were part of the society of people awake and moving at five a.m. They nodded at me as they walked past and seemed like a pretty amiable bunch.

I ended up in conversation with one of the flight attendants, who I'd guess was around fifty. I mentioned my plane took off at 6:25 and, being as it was 5:30, I was just the least bit nervous I wasn't at the airport yet. "Don't worry," she said. "Our plane takes off at 6:35 and we're not there."

I pointed out that, while the plane wouldn’t take off without them, I was not an essential element to my airplane's flight. This was something she had apparently never thought of, and she roared with laughter.

I don't say it seemed like she had never considered this because she was thick or anything along that line; rather, she seemed like a humble enough person she never considered that her not being on the plane at the appointed time would mean that the plane would have to take off.

I asked her how long she’d been a flight attendant; she said nine months. I asked how she liked it, and she said she was taking it one day at a time.

"I bet you could write a book," I said. She laughed. "You have no idea!"

***

The flight attendant started talking to the pilot, and I lapsed back into silence, when all of a sudden, a friendly, late-middle aged fellow, walked into the lobby and leaned up against the column nearest to me. He shuddered. "It's cold out there."

What is this? I quietly said to myself. I never talk to people in hotel lobbies, now God's throwing 'em at me one after another.

"Yeah," I deadpanned, "who would have guessed it would be cold in Michigan in December?"

"Well, I'm from Arizona," he said. I determined it was Scottsdale.

"Have you ever eaten at Los Olivas?" I asked.

He said he hadn't. I said it was a damn fine Mexican restaurant.

It turned out he was a salesman for Kobe consumer electronics. He shared with me some of the things he did. And that he had lived eight places in the U.S. (Whether with the same company or not, I don’t know.)

And it struck me that he had lived what we wouldn’t call a fascinating life, but an interesting one. After all, do we all understand what it's like to be a salesman for Corporate America? To travel twice a month as part of your job to Detroit, and other cities as well? I don’t.

He could write a book.

The flight attendant could write a book.

The old black gentleman who drove the shuttle that picked me up, with his earpiece that gleamed with a blue light every now and then could write a book.

All sorts of stories to be told. But no time to tell them.