Every once in a while, I have a day that is so unbelievable it appears to be the fantasy stuff of movies. Today was one such day. So in the lengthy tradition of March 18th, sit back, relax, and be ready to read all about the craziest day ever.
I suppose it all started last night, when I knew my airport call time and yet was up far too late to get there on time. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I found myself removed from my comfy bed and forced to remain awake for some unfinished business until approximately three hours before I was to rise the next morning. This was unpleasant. Even more unpleasant was the realization- three and one half hours later- that my alarm had inexplicably failed to go off and I was latelatelate getting up and going to be latelatelate for the airport and miss my flight!
After running around the house in the approximation of headless chickens, we somehow arrived at the airport early enough to nab some breakfast at Elephant’s before I had to board. Sweet. I guess there’s not a lot of airport traffic at 6 am. Yummy, yummy breakfast, travel not thwarted by lateness, looks like this day could turn around after all. I was ready to head off into the joyous land of coyotes and corn.
I’m on the plane. My seatmate is a surprisingly pleasant woman who shares my taste in books and handbags. We have a nice conversation, then she retreats into her novel and I into my audio book and stitching. Drinks are delivered. We rise above the cloud cover and I am thinking to myself, “this could turn out all right after all…” After all, what could possibly go wrong with Hector the sea otter hanging out on the wing with us? Sea otters are totally a good omen, right? I’m in. This is going to be a good day.
(Look closely. That’s a sea otter on the wing threatening to run up to my window, break it in, and chew my face off as I suffocate due to the deoxygenated cabin.)
About 20 minutes into the flight, I’m noticing some beautiful mountain peaks sticking out from beneath the clouds. Unwisely, I decide to take my attention off of my immediate surroundings and therefore lose my protective bubbleofnonannoyance. It is in this moment that THAT PERSON in the seat in front of me decides she needs to lower her seat and rearrange her entire person in one violent movement. Before I can say “slap-ass cold” my entire untouched glass of ice water has flung itself from my tray table into the air and ends up in my lap. And guess what? It’s slap-ass cold. And suddenly that phrase has a new, literal meaning. It’s not a good one.
Tears spring into my eyes, perhaps from last night’s frustrated-I-can’t-get-to-bed crying jag, or perhaps from the shock of the cold. For some reason my first instinct is to look at the back of THAT PERSON’S head. No reaction, she obviously has no idea what’s just happened. I grab at the upended cup and right it, because that’s going to help loads. I stare at my soaking jeans, my soaking cross-stitch, my soaking cross-stitch chart- MY CROSS STITCH CHART! Ink is running, the paper is already beginning to crinkle up in ice-water-induced devastation. I snatch at the chart, trying to rescue it from the water that is already soaking it. It has been stitched so many different times that it rips in half along the folds. It is at this point that I realize that my lap is FREEZING, why is it so COLD? Oh, right, there’s ice in my crotch. Awesome. My eyes dart wildly from my ruined stitching to the back of THAT PERSON’S head (still oblivious to the chaos behind her), to the floor under the seat upon which I’ve stored all of my electrical devices and onto which water is rapidly spreading, to my completely soaked jeans that are being frantically dabbed and wiped at with paper towels by my seatmate.
Wait a minute. Is this complete stranger blotting my lap with a paper towel? Uh, yes, she is. A new level of shock is beginning to register as I desperately try to remove said giant cluster of ice from the tippy top of my dripping lap before Ms. Extra Nice goes for it herself. She realizes that she hasn’t even bought me a drink yet and blushingly hands me the paper towels so I can finish this operation myself. (Because paper-thin airplane towels are doing a marvelous job of this, I can tell you.) Then, so as to make up for the drinkless faux pas, she asks the fairly unconcerned flight attendant for some more water for me.
I’m so interested in drinking right now.
“Sure,” says the ever-good-natured flight attendant, “now, this glass is for drinking. Try not to spill it all over yourself.”
I am the only person on the plane not surprised when he drops dead in the aisle. Apparently my saber-filled glare penetrated his heart on the very first try.
While other passengers and flight attendants remove the body from the aisle way- fire hazard, I guess- I continue to evaluate my situation. Water is soaking through to my previously un-facebook-disclosed turquoise diamond patterned undies and dripping down to my toes. The shivering is beginning, that uncontrollable quaking that eventually gives way to full-body thrashing if I don’t get warm pretty darn fast. Ms. Extra Nice and I abandon all pretense and begin mopping with a new fervor. We eventually realize we’ve gone as far as we can and hand over our giant wad of soaked paper towels to the new replacement flight attendant.
And THAT PERSON sleeps on.
Conveniently, a very, very unhappy child who has no toy other than an uber-amplified Tickle Me Elmo is sitting two or three rows behind me. I spend the rest of the flight sorting and laying out my water-soaked stitching threads to dry and listening to an alternating chorus of hysterical crying and maniacal laughter. My nerves are as calm as calm can be.
Upon landing in
Whoever decided that airports should no longer install air hand dryers needs to be shot. With a new most-hated word (chafing) dancing through my head, I schlup from bathroom to bathroom, and finally on the fifth try I find a wall- sweet relief!- of hand dryers. It is then that I realize what fabulously interesting positions are required of me in order for the affected areas of my jeans to be dried. I look like a cross between those Chinese contortionist girls and a Tennessee Leghound. Luckily I’ve got good stationary balance, and I’m able to stand for long periods of time in numerous strategic positions… things are getting a little drier.
(I’d like pause here and apologize to Jim Irsay, Jim Caldwell, Peyton Manning, and the entire Indianapolis Colts franchise, because I happened to be wearing a Colts ball cap during this little fiasco. Nothing says classy fan like a woman bent over at the waist and backed up to a wall dryer.)
Needless to say, my antics clear out the restroom pretty darn fast. In the end, it is a maintenance worker that removes me from my dryer-lovin fun. She needs to clean the bathroom, it is going to “be close.”
Saber-charged stare. “Are you kidding me?”
“We close now, we clean.”
“Do you see how wet I am?”
“We close now, we clean.”
“Do you know that this is the only restroom with air dryers in the entire airport?”
“We close now, we clean.”
“Can you not just clean around me?”
“We close now, we clean.”
“Perhaps you’d like to just rub me all over the floor instead of wasting all that time with the mop? I’m sure that I could distribute quite a bit of water from the seat of my pants and save you a step.”
“We close now, we clean.”
“Is it possible that you don’t understand a word I’m saying?”
“We close now, we clean.”
“By the light of the purple moon the kumquats dance in the ocean.”
“We close now, we clean.”
I exit. Squish, squish.
I am now faced with a three-hour layover, during the entirety of which I cannot sit down because I will leave a little butt-shaped puddle on the seat when I stand up. Besides, I’m uncomfortable, cold, and wet, and I don’t want to sit. I want to dry. I contemplate running back to the bathroom, breaking down the “we close” sign, saber-glaring the worker until she’s immobilized, ripping off my pants and holding them under the dryer until they’re satisfyingly un-soaked, but decide this is not a wise decision. In the end, I find a tall table that I can stand at and place some reading material in front of me on the surface. At the table next to me is a mother and her three-year-old, whose only entertainment is- of course- a Tickle Me Elmo. They look familiar. Turns out they have a three hour layover, too. And the laughter carries on.
Somehow I manage to get a little work done during this layover. Somehow I also manage to lose the little cloth bag that stores and protects my computer mouse. I have no idea how this happened. I stood in one place the entire time. For three hours. I did not leave my table, I did not go to the bathroom, I did not throw anything away, I did not stitch the baggie into the leg of my jeans. I simply reached into my backpack, removed the mouse from it’s super-soft-super-protective bag, worked for a couple hours, and upon reaching back into the backpack discovered that said bag disappeared. I now created another spectacle by crawling around on the airport floor (displaying for one and all the large, still-soaked butt of my jeans) looking for the lost bag. It is, inexplicably, gone forever. I don’t know where it went or how it got out of my bag, but my money is on Elmo.
I head back to the gate for my connection- squish, squish- and hear that people behind me are laughing at the sight of my couldn’t-hold-it-hate-airplane-bathroom jeans. I cringe. My self-esteem is really thriving on this. I’m going to need lots… and lots… of therapy when I get back home. Then I realize that there’s only one person laughing, and it sounds suspiciously like Elmo. Yep, Elmo’s coming with me to Indy. Whee.
I’ve boarded the plane. I’m prepared for the worst. I see my seat- a window seat! In an empty row! Hope springs eternal. I know better than to hold out for that, though- I scurry to stash my bags before my new seatmates (who turn out to be lovely) arrive. Elmo and Demon Child mosey on past me. They settle in two rows behind me.
Of course they do.
For the two and a half hours from
Cabin doors close.
Child begins screaming.
Plane taxis to runway.
Child continues screaming.
Plane takes off.
Child screams louder.
Plane flies.
Child screams.
Mother says to child, “We’re flying now, are you done yet?”
Child screams. First, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” and then returns to unintelligible screeching.
For two and one half hours- yes, the entirety of the flight, no more, no less- this child screams. I don’t mean he cries, I don’t mean he whines, I don’t mean he yells, I don’t mean he plays loudly, I mean he screams. And screams. And screams some more. I don’t know how he does it. I figure for sure he’s going to lose his voice at some point, because this is a real honest to goodness screech. But no, he keeps going and going and going until I am about two frazzled nerves from going back to his seat myself and saber-glaring him into silence. About 20 minutes into this little party, I hear his mom say, “Here’s your Elmo, will you stop now?” and the child respond with another NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and a higher-pitched, augmented-decible scream. Mom sets Elmo off into tickle-induced hysteria, and child raises it another notch. This happens every half hour. It’s unbelievable. I am in literal, absolute disbelief. I can not describe to you the horror, absolute horror of this flight. By the end of it, my seatmates and I have helped each other through the agony by braiding each others’ hair and then pulling said hairs out strand by strand.
As the plane touches down, I hear mom give it one more go. “We’ve landed. Are you happy now?” Elmo says “heeheeheeheeheehohohoho hahahahhaha," and the child says, “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!” And silence blankets the shocked aircraft. After a moment, the rest of the passengers and I break into simultaneous applause, as though we’ve just incapacitated some terrorists. The sound of our applause apparently does not make the child happy- it begins to scream again. Applause stops. Screaming does not.
As I leave the aircraft, I glance back at my seat. Yep, butt-shaped wet spot. Awesome.
Now I’m in the
We get in the van and decide it’s time for some good old-fashioned
As I collapse into my for-the-next-week bed, my foot slips to the left and accidentally knocks over the glass of ice water that I have placed on the floor next to the bed. A rapidly spreading puddle of water aims for my luggage (still full of electronic devices) and spreads across the floor at an alarming speed. My socks are soaked.
Sigh. This is where I came in…
