A good sign: When passing time at the airport, she decided to learn a valuable skill

I had no intention to write about the new Kansas City International terminal. It’s a shiny new airport terminal, so it’s had lots of news coverage.

But it does offer something that stopped me in my restless tracks one day when our flight was delayed. My husband, Steve, opened his laptop, and I checked out the first pages of a book — but couldn’t stop myself from hearing the conversations around me. I have a natural inclination to chat with random people, but I was not in the mood, so I took a walk.

I love guessing what climate people in airports are headed for by what they’re wearing, and how they tire out toddlers by racing them like greyhounds before they’re cooped up in planes. Sometimes I see a neighbor or friend and nod hello. This particular day I was drawn toward the aroma of barbecue and beer wafting from the food court and on the way over noticed something posted on the wall in the wonderful children’s playground: an American Sign Language “dictionary.”

It’s huge. And it’s mesmerizing.

There’s a ledge (which you’re probably not supposed to stand on) from which you can look at the poster inside the playground. I did perch on it and could very easily see the simple illustrations of each letter of the alphabet. I shaped “a” and “b.” I closed my eyes and formed them from memory.

I walked around the food court, ritually making a’s and b’s, then returned to the chart and learned the rest of the letters in the top line. I walked to the end of B terminal, practicing in order from “a” to “g.”

It was a long delay.

In about half an hour, I was able to form all 26 letters in order. It was harder to do them in random order, so I walked to the end of a different terminal, consulting the cheat sheet phone pic I took of the chart to jog my memory when needed.

I am not the most patient person in the world, and I wish flights were always on time. But we fly a few times a year, so I have a sanity- and self-preservation approach to delays: You can’t control when planes go, and do not ever make a scene.

Lucky for me, this delay was at KCI, and the challenge to learn ASL was right there, irresistible and rewarding.

Being born into an airline employee’s family gave me and my sisters a unique experience of air travel. We flew non-revenue for decades and loved it, even though our family of nine usually got split up, half or so with each parent, headed to the same place through different cities.

We Murphys have slept in too many airport “lounges” to remember (some almost on our honeymoons), and we always left home hours before dawn to make the first space-available flights of the day. Airports were for waiting, for standing in slow-moving lines, for making eye contact with sleep-deprived employees’ kind and empathetic fellow non-rev faces, and mostly, for starting or concluding an adventure.

For my money, the ASL chart is the terminal’s front page story. Every airport should add one to educate its flying public to understand those who speak silently and intentionally, even when just chatting with strangers. Had I been surrounded by people using it, I may have read that book after all. I felt so happy when we finally boarded. I congratulated myself in ASL, practicing using both hands, without having to keep my voice down.

Reach Ellen at murphysister04@gmail.com.