This is your captain speaking. Welcome to my blog and thanks for reading. Make sure your seat belts are securely fastened and follow along as I take you from sentence to sentence of my most overwhelming day at an airport, or several airports rather. You shall arrive at your destination in about eight minutes, give or take turbulence; we’ll call it reading skills. For safety purposes please keep your seat backs and tray tables locked in the upright position. In case of emergency, I do not provide oxygen masks so if you laugh excessively from reading this I guess you are screwed.
Now, let’s embark on a journey. I’ve already mentioned it took place at an airport so let’s cut to the chase and skip the three and a half hour drive there, because that just involves heavy eyes, a cup of coffee and poor driving. So there I was at Omaha’s airport and honestly I should have known the moment security had to take my bag aside to remove my illegal six-ounce deadly bottle of face wash and proceed to throw it in the trash can right in front of my face, that maybe my day was not going to go according to plan. But I shook it off, sincerely told the lady to have a nice day and proceeded to my gate where I sat down and pulled out the book I’m reading on how to be successful. This book makes me feel good whenever I think about the fact that I just spent five years getting a degree and can’t find a job. Anyway, about two minutes later I ended up on facebook updating my status because I’m sure everyone was just dying to know what I was doing at noon on a Tuesday (We tell ourselves that at least).
So an hour later I boarded the plane and found my seat, buckled my seat belt and pulled out my feel good book and began reading when thirty eight seconds later a woman asked me if I would trade seats with her so she could sit by her little boy. Not a problem. I was ecstatic to have an aisle seat because for a tall girl that means legroom. I’m feeling pretty good about the switch when I look to my right and across the aisle I see a very small woman, (by small I don’t mean short but arms of toothpicks), couldn’t have been too much older than myself, with what looked to be a little one year old cheerio eater. Ah he was a cute one with a head full of hair and dimpled cheeks as he so awkwardly shoved the cheerios in his mouth and crunched away as babies do. I thought nothing of it really. It’s not like I had never seen a baby on an airplane before.
Some fifteen minutes later the captain gets on the loud speaker to announce there are some problems with the plane and they need to do some repairing before taking off. Well this didn’t surprise me because I have spent two hours sitting on a runway before so how bad could it be? I continue reading and begin to notice that cheerio boy is starting to get a bit fussy to my right. His mother, who could have probably hula hooped the cheerios he was eating stood up and began to walk around the cabin with him to try and calm him down. An hour later we are ready for take off. The woman who has successfully walked the boy to sleep begins to sit down when suddenly cheerio boy wakes up and begins to make noises that made me wish I had volume control on my ears. This boy was beginning to throw a tantrum. At first I went on reading my book like nothing was happening but with peripheral vision and a good set of ears I couldn’t help but become fidgety myself listening to the tornado siren next to me. I watched as the woman fought and struggled with the cheerio boy as he screamed and grunted and threw his head back on her chest as though he was suffering the worst of a seizure. This battle, that needed to be resolved with a nap, went on for about fifteen or twenty minutes. My right ear felt as though I had fired several shots from a rifle and cheerio boy and his mom were becoming awfully sweaty.
Finally a lady behind me stood up and said, “Honey let me take him for a bit and give you a break.” Without hesitation, toothpick mom hands her child over to the stranger and guzzles down a bottle of water with tears in her eyes. Cheerio boy’s screams only became worse and this went on for another ten minutes before the stranger gave up and gave the boy back. As soon as toothpick mom had her son back in her arms again he immediately became silent. Note to all mothers with babies: If your child is throwing a tantrum that you can’t seem to resolve hand him to a stranger and then he will have something to cry about. This way when the stranger hands him back, the child will be so glad to be back in your arms silence will overcome his sweaty cheerio eating body.
So I finally land in Chicago where my next flight would take off in a little over an hour. Only one problem, my next flight wasn’t going to be taking off at all because it was canceled. So I run to the customer service line to ask them to help me find a new flight but so did the other thirty people in front of me. I’m not really a fan of standing in lines. But thirty minutes later I made it to the front desk. And so I told the man my situation and he replies back to me, “So what?” I’m thinking to myself as I look at the extremely overweight man going bald behind the counter, “You must really hate your life if you are working for customer service and you reply with ‘so what’ when someone tells you their flight is canceled.” I knew I had two choices at this moment. I could get mad or get friendly. Getting annoyed, as I sometimes do, is quite a turnoff to people and in my experience has not got me anywhere. So I got friendly of course. This strategy backfired on me however because in my attempt to kill him with kindness I ended up getting to hear that he had a son who was my age that played baseball and could throw a 93 mph fast ball. He was telling me how he was going to make it to the pros and blah blah blah when the lady beside him said, “Dude she don’t care about that, she just wants to get on a plane! Help the poor girl out.” Then she proceeds to tell me that she also has a son that’s my age who is playing college football and trying to get into the NFL. So I leave the customer service desk with two possible prospects for husbands and no plane ticket. The best they could do was put me on standby.
In the mean time my aunt and uncle had called the United Airlines to try and work their magic. They had success. I was re booked to Milwaukee. Only one problem, the plane was leaving in about forty minutes and I still had to get to my gate that happened to be clear across the airport and then print off my new ticket. It was a zoo. As I weaved in and out of zebras, monkeys and elephants I began to panic. I finally reached my gate but surprise surprise there was a line to the help desk. I looked at the screen and it read, Milwaukee boarding in ten minutes. I made it to the front of the line just as everyone started boarding. I grabbed my ticket ran on the plane, or in this case a puddle jumper, and prepared myself for a twenty-five minute flight to Milwaukee.
After I arrived to Milwaukee I went to the first desk I could find and asked them to print me off a ticket to DC. The lady looked up my flight information and told me that I was switched from United to Frontier and needed to go talk to Frontier for a ticket. This meant that I had to go all the way back to the entrance where check-ins were to get a new ticket. How convenient this was, and when I say this I’m totally kidding. Because now my next flight was going to be leaving in an hour and I had to go back, re-check in and go through security for a second time before then proceeding to find my gate. Life is good. Let me just say again, from my experiences people at airports really act like they hate their jobs. Miss Frontier lady was very unfriendly. But after many exchanged dirty looks I received my new ticket and jetted up to security where I was greeted by a man who checked my license and told me he liked me better with my hair down. Gee thanks. I like myself better when I’m not stressed about airports sir, but your compliment or your attempt to give me a compliment just might help me make it through the day.
I finally get to my gate to then find out that my flight was delayed an hour and a half. I love flying. This was where I really wanted to hit up a bar in the airport and blow thirty dollars getting drunk, or go find the nearest McDonald's and comfort myself with a burger, fries and large Dr. Pepper. Instead I went and bought a salad and orange juice and sat down by the window, turned on my iTunes and watched the sunset, telling myself airports are all out of my control.
And two hours later I was finally on my way to DC. The crew on the plane felt bad for us so they came by and brought us cookies and milk and let us watch cable for free. This was almost worth it. Warm chocolate chip cookies compare to nothing else in this world. So I watched an episode of Intervention and Hoarders and thought again to myself, yes life is good. I landed in DC at 12:30, a little over 12 hours after arriving in Omaha. My uncle picked me up and we drove back to his house where I proceeded to crash into bed around 1:30am.
The next morning a boy in a red and yellow space suite with goggles greeted me at my bedside. “It’s time to wake up,” he said. “What are you wearing?”, I asked my soon to be eight year old cousin. “I’m a jet pack flier”, he claimed, “And I’ve flown here to wake you up for breakfast.”
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