This classic installment of The State of the Union originally appeared on August 15, 2003.

I’ve always wanted a nemesis.

When I was growing up, all the best superheroes had nemeses.  Superman had Lex Luthor. Spiderman had the Green Goblin.  Batman had the Riddler and the Penguin.  Aquaman had ... well, I’m sure there was someone.  Jacques Cousteau, maybe?

Whoever it was, a nemesis seemed like a pretty cool thing to have -- someone to challenge you and bring out your best self; someone who you could justifiably loathe from the time you got up in the morning until the time you went to bed at night; someone whose wicked cackle would haunt you for all of your days.

After all these years, I’ve finally found my nemesis.  She works at the airport.

Perhaps a little background information would help here.

My roommate is a consultant with one of those fancy-pants consulting firms, and he’s been staffed on an out-of-town project for the last several months, which means that he flies to work every week.  Rather than leave his car at the airport while he’s out of town, I drop him off there on Sundays and pick him back up on Thursdays.  I do this because that’s the kind of friend I am.  And also, he pays me.

Now, the drop-off part of this weekly routine is almost always uneventful, the notable exception being the time we got in that heated argument about who would win between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera in a game of Scrabble.  I said Christina, he said Britney, and it nearly came to blows.  But mostly it’s just pull in, drop off, pull out.  Easy.

The pick-up part, however, is where things get tricky.  The way our airport is designed, when you are picking up an arriving passenger, you pull off to the right into this little inlet, marked “5 MINUTE STOPPING ONLY.”

Because of the limited distance of this inlet, only so many cars can fit into the pick-up lane. In theory, when the lane is full, the car in front should pull out and loop back around so that more cars can enter the lane from the back.  However, since most people would rather not take the lap around the airport that this procedure requires, the cars at the front usually just stay at the front, parked, until their passengers arrive, which means that the people trying to enter the lane from the back, unless they like taking airport laps, must wait for an opening in the pick-up lane while idling in the through lane, thus blocking traffic.

At least, that’s what happened until the airport hired someone to prevent it from happening.

Nemesis, enter stage left.

She is a large woman; tall, with brownish-beige hair cut in a modified Dutch-Boy bob that hasn’t been fashionable since ... ever.

Her uniform is navy blue, adorned on the left breast pocket with a badge of some sort.  I assume this badge has been issued to her by Airport Security, but you can never be too sure.  Anyone can get a badge these days.

She carries no weapon, but wields her walkie-talkie like a blackjack.

Her job is simple:  when the lane fills up, tell the people at the front to go around. Sometimes, when cars aren’t moving up appropriately to fill in the open spaces in front of them, she prods them into pulling forward.

This is where the problem begins, for you see, there are so many things that can delay an arriving plane.  Strong headwinds, traffic on the tarmac, bad salmon; all of these can cause a later-than-anticipated arrival.  Which means waiting longer than expected for your arriving passenger.

Which means that sooner or later, you’re going to hear that tap-tap-tap on your window, the tip of the walkie-talkie tap-tap-tapping against the glass and startling you from your reading or your daydreaming or your otherwise harmless reverie, at which point you will hear her refrain:

“I need you to go around.”

How many times must she say that in a day; in a week; in a month?  As maddening as it is for me to hear it, how can it be tolerable for her, to be gainfully employed in a job in which her entire required vocabulary is no greater than that of a wind-up doll?

“I need you to go around.”

Sometimes, when I’m feeling mean, I like to make her work a little harder.  I pretend not to see that the car in front of me has moved up, so that she has to walk up the hill, get my attention, and motion for me to move up.

But in the end, she always wins, and I end up doing another airport lap.

Certainly, I understand that a congested pick-up lane can cause serious traffic issues, and that in this era of heightened airport security, in which every third passenger must remove his shoes just to get past the metal detector, one can never be too cautious.

But that understanding doesn’t make taking that lap around the airport any more enjoyable.

For months on end, I went around, sometimes once, sometimes twice, once even thrice. But never, in all those trips, was I able to avoid her wrath completely.  After months of this frustration, I settled on a goal -- to successfully execute a pick-up on one pass.

This week, I came prepared to achieve that goal.  Employing a new strategy, I arrived at the airport later than usual, figuring that even if my roommate had to wait a few extra minutes for me, those minutes would be a small price to pay for the sweet victory we would claim over our now-collective nemesis.

As I pulled in to the back of the pick-up line, I felt confident.  Just to be sure, though, I called my roommate on his mobile phone to check on his progress.  “I’m just getting my bag at baggage claim,” he said.  “I should be there in two minutes.”

Two minutes.  Smirking, I rolled the car slowly forward, pulling up behind the cars that had rolled forward in front of me.  I unlocked the passenger-side doors.

Relaxed and supremely certain that it was merely a matter of seconds until my roommate opened the door and tossed his luggage in the back seat, I began to look for a decent song on the radio.

Then I heard a tap on the window.  Tap-tap-tap.  It was her.  “I need you to go around,” she said, glaring at me like I was the most detestable sort of filth this world had ever produced.

I began to protest, to say, “I just spoke to my friend, he’ll be here in a minute,” but before I could even utter the words, she delivered her quick reply:  “You gotta go around.”

“But, I ...” I stammered.

But nothing.  There is no arguing with this woman.  I don’t even know her name.  “You gotta go around,” she mouthed again, shaking her head.  “You gotta go around.”

Broken and defeated, I went around.

Curses!  Foiled again.