We ran into Ryan when we sat down at the gate at the airport. She had an owl, wings outspread, tatooed on her chest and an atom with swirling electrons on her cheek and a foxstronaut in a space suit on her right hand.
From the moment we sat down, we knew she was something, not because of her tattoos but because of the loud advice she was giving to a friend on the phone to recognize her boyfriend was a jerk and dump him.
Ryan has two kids and six dogs and is trying to get a tattoo business to take off. Energy radiates from her eyes, her voice, her presence. Non-stop, boundless energy.
On the plane from Austin to Dulles (the first leg of our flight to Rome), she sat not far us and had a three hour conversation with a guy sitting next to her. They started out talking about Austin (he was thinking of moving here from Virginia, where Ryan comes from). She warned him about the heat. And then about the drought. And then she talked about how we’re over fishing the world’s oceans. And she told him about her two kids and her six dogs and her new tattoo business. And about vegan BBQ. (You got that right: vegan BBQ.)
When the baby across the aisle made some cooing sounds, Ryan turned and started playing with him, eliciting smiles and giggles. She reached across the aisle at poked him with her right hand.
“Do you see foxtronaut with his foxygen tanks?” she asked.
He squealed with joy. And you know his mother must have been tickled pink.
Ryan is perhaps the closest person to Inside Out’s Joy I will ever meet. She didn’t have blue hair… but you know, she’d look smashing in it.