This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under Family Stuff, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One of the nice things about taking a blog-break is you get the chance to re-visit priorities in your life that you have been putting off. For me, the primary procrastinated activity has been traveling back home to visit my family. I’ve been back by myself, but the whole family hasn’t traveled together in almost two years, and there’s a new baby boy that the great grandparents are dying to meet. Why so selfish about allowing my family the opportunity to see their kids and grandkids? Let me spin you a little yarn about that last experience, which will undoubtedly shed some light on my reluctance to globe trot with two rugrats. Here we go.
We had decided to take the Flyaway to LAX this time. Flyaway is essentially a large bus that travels to and from the airport from a depot about 25 miles away. The parking is about 75% less than the local airport parking and the seats are large and comfortable. It would be the perfect way for my wife, Aline and our daughter, Frankie, to launch our trip to St Louis. Easy, quiet and affordable. In an effort to save even more money, we had solicited the services of my brother-in-law to drop us off at the Flyaway depot in order to save on the parking as well. It was the perfect plan and, at precisely 2:00 PM, the agreed-upon time for our pickup, the three of us were ready, happy, and standing at the front door of our house with our luggage waiting for him to arrive. There was excitement in the air; nothing could go wrong.
As 2:15 clicked by on the oven clock I began to worry slightly, although not too much. Our flight was at 4:45 PM and Flyaway buses left every fifteen minutes. There should be no reason for alarm. When a nonchalant call to my brother-in-law yielded only a voicemail, I chuckled, rolled my eyes good-naturedly at Aline and turned back to looking out the front door. His car rolled up about 20 minutes later. “OK, babe, lets move it a little bit,” I said to my wife and we loaded the luggage and the kid into the car and headed for the shuttle. At 2:50 we were sitting in the Flyaway bus station, eagerly awaiting the 3:00 bus. My calculations put us there by 3:45. A bit tighter than I would have liked, traveling with a young child, but still manageable. I glanced at my watch a few times with a bit more anticipation than I had at the house, and looked for the bus. 3:05. I’m probably a little fast. No worries. 3:10. Hmmm. That’s strange; Flyaway is NEVER late. 3:20. I was now starting to panic a bit. I’ve never been one to thrive in situations over which I have absolutely no control, and this was certainly one of them. My brother-in-law had an appointment downtown, and was long gone. If we missed this flight, I might find myself stranded at LAX with 45 suitcases and a 2-year-old. Not a great combo.
It was 3:25 when the bus rolled in. The smile had faded from my face and I glanced at my daughter, happily drawing in her coloring book, then at Aline. I caught her eyes for a brief moment and saw a glimpse of worry in them. She knew as well as I that we might be up a certain creek without a certain paddle. They loaded us onto the bus, which had apparently been held due to a terrorist scare, and we were on our way.
Most people have heard about traffic in Los Angeles. Those of us who live here know that, 9 times out of 10, everything is fine. The tenth time, however, you might as well pull over and check into a hotel for the night or get out and walk. This was the tenth time.
When we finally reached the airport it was 4:30. During the ride I had become more and more frantic about the time, and my demeanor had followed suit. We had roughly 15 minutes to check baggage, get through security and to the gate before we missed the flight. Sweat beaded on my now-furrowed brow as the bus door opened.
“GO. GO. GO!” I shouted at Aline as I snatched up our suitcases and bolted for the ticketing counter. We were in trouble and my heart had begun to pound in my chest. My only hope was that they would cut us some slack due to the delay and hold the plane. Deep down, I knew that what we still had to do and the amount of time we had in which to do it were not lining up. The math had become flawed, and I felt ill.
I sprinted to the ticketing counter and crashed into it with my trembling hand, clutching our wrinkled boarding passes, outstretched toward the agent. “HereyougowearesolateI’msorrytheFlyawaywaslateandterroristsandbaby!” I shouted at her. As she slowly cocked a sinister eyebrow at me in annoyance I knew I had selected the wrong agent. Most people grind coffee in the morning. This one had an axe.
“I’m sorry sir,” she said, looking at me flatly, the hint of a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth, “ airline policy is that no one is allowed to go to the gate in less than 45 minutes of their flight’s scheduled departure.” I stared. She waited, eyebrows raised.
I took a deep breath as my wife and daughter caught up and stood behind me. I couldn’t be charming while sweaty, angry and heaving, so I calmed myself, took another breath, and grinned at her.
“I understand completely. Policies are definitely important. I imagine people like me make it really hard for you to do your job and I’m really sorry. It’s just that this wasn’t really my fault and I have a two-year-old here and I think that, if we really, really run right now we might be able to make it before the flight leaves. See, we’re going home to see my family and Grandma and Granddad are getting kind of old and haven’t really seen my daughter so it’s kind of important that I make this. Would you mind making an exception for us this one time? I’m actually a pretty nice guy, and I just want to see my family. Please?”
The woman typed a couple of angry keystrokes on her computer, which looked dishearteningly like a logout, and turned her back on me. With her back still turned, so I could barely hear, she said “That’s policy. Next time I’d suggest being a little more organized and getting here early.”
I lost it. Charming Matt flew right out through the Jetway and up into the wild blue yonder.
“HEY!” I shouted at her as she was walking away. She turned around looked at me, a mocking, amused expression glued to her unpleasant face.
“Do you know how hard it is to get a two-year-old packed and to the airport? Do you know how much harder it is when the bus service you utilized, a bus service endorsed by your airline shows up half an hour late? Do you even have children?! My guess is no because no man would come within fifty feet of such a disgusting woman, and it wouldn’t matter how drunk he was!”
That last remark caused a few things to happen simultaneously. The first was that I felt my wife’s grip tighten on my arm and looked down at her to find her looking up at me, wide-eyed, as if to say “Dude. Not good.” The second was the shrew-agent whirled around and began rushing toward me at full speed, fire spewing from her nostrils. The third was her manager, now very much aware of the situation, was also rushing toward me, determined to intercept her before she hurled herself over the counter and landed us all in prison. She succeeded.
After several apologies, explanations and driving home my point that several minutes of precious time had been wasted by this altercation, the manager, much softer and warmer than her predecessor, took pity on us. We had four minutes to make it to the gate.
“You’re going to have to run. All of you,” she said hastily, waving my baggage claim checks at me. “I’ll call ahead to the gate and see if I can get them to hold the plane. You’re at #43. GO NOW!”
I turned on my heel and yelled the first thing, which also turned out to be the most unintelligent thing, I could think of in the general direction of my wife and kid.
“Let’s ROCK!”
With that I bolted down the corridor toward the gate, determined to make it there on time and stop the plane, even if my family took a few minutes to catch up. Breathing heavily and pumping my arms with the precision of a well-trained Olympic runner I flew across the airport. The wind was whistling in my ears as I leaped onto the escalator, the bionic man sound playing in my head. It was when my foot hit the fourth step I became aware of someone shouting at me, and realized that I had been hearing that sound since I dashed from the counter but had been subconsciously ignoring it.
“MAAAAAAATT!” I looked back over my shoulder down across the sea of people on the floor and spied my wife and daughter, now two tiny specks some 400 yards away, waving frantically at me and jumping up and down. Immediately behind them was the nice manager lady, also waving and holding up the rope to let them through security.
“WHAT!” I belted. “Let’s ROCK!” I have no idea why I said it again. The first time was embarrassing enough. It just came out.
“YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG FLIPPING WAY!”
Do you know what a car seat carrier is? It is a gigantic backpack into which one’s car seat and base can be stuffed. It is monolithic, and more than once I have compared the sensation of carrying it to wrapping Danny DeVito in a large hefty bag and lugging him around for a piggy back ride all day. Distraught and horrified that I had not only bolted full speed a half-mile across the airport in the wrong direction and yelled “lets rock” across a crowd of people twice, I forgot about the car seat carrier on my back. I spun on the escalator, which had almost reached the top, and DeVito jammed himself between me and the metal hand rail, preventing me from completing my turn. The lower half of my body, however, was gyrating at such a speed that it continued, causing my downhill leg to buckle sideways underneath me. As I began to fall, DeVito caught himself on the railing and the shoulder straps of the carrier forced my arms to skyrocket above my head, my biceps pressing firmly into my cheeks causing a loud “BBBBPPPPPPPHHFFFF” sound to escape my mouth. I choked a little as DeVito let go and tumbled down a few stairs before finally righting myself, the carrier now dragging behind me by one shoulder. I raced down the escalator, shins throbbing, and ran through the sea of people, sure that I was trailing blood.
After what seemed like an eternity, I reached them, and the nice manager shoved us under the rope and screamed at the security agent to put us through first. My daughter, unable to grasp the urgency of the situation, was laughing hysterically and attempting to explain who Hello Kitty was on the side of her suitcase to the security guard.
“JUST. NO. TIME!” I shouted as I snatched her up under one arm, DeVito still dragging behind me, pushed my way through security and resumed my sprint toward Gate 43. The terminal narrowed as I ran, and people were frantically trying to move out of my way as I raced down the hallway. My daughter had stopped laughing the second I had picked up her and her Hello Kitty suitcase and was shrieking uncontrollably as I ran with her under my arm, her miniature body bouncing up and down violently. I briefly imagined the experience as similar to what firefighters must feel on their way to a four-alarm blaze, parting traffic, sirens wailing. I caught my second wind with sweat burning my eyes, lowered my head and ran as hard as I could.
About ten gates away I managed to glance at my watch. 4:45. If the ticketing lady hadn’t called ahead, we were going to miss it. My daughter had gone limp in my arm and I wondered if she was still breathing; or if I had perhaps jolted her to the point of unconsciousness. My arm burned from the weight and I was about to drop her when, once again, I heard my name.
I turned and continued to run backwards and looked back in horror at what was taking place. My wife was running behind me, tears streaming down her face, an overstuffed suitcase trailing in each hand. Because the suitcases were different sizes, she must have been having equilibrium problems. One of them had tipped over and opened up, and was now spewing my unmentionables all the way down the hallway.
“Your boxers, babe. Your BOXERS.” She yelled, still running and sobbing in a terrible combination of exasperation and exhaustion. “For a split second I thought about going back to help her but instead turned back around and yelled “WE’LL BUY MORE! THERE’S A TARGET,” over my shoulder. I had one gate to go and god help me, we were going to make that flight, underwear or not.
I burst into a large open area which contained the ticketing counters and doors to multiple gates. Still in full sprint, my eyes swept the room erratically and finally landed on their mark. A large sign reading “Gate 43”. My face fell in terror as I lowered my gaze to the doorway leading to our plane. It was closing. I had made it just in time to see the leg and foot of the final passenger disappearing down the Jetway and heard the door slam shut, locking loudly. I screamed, muscles aching as I made my final burst toward it. The weight had simply become too much to bear, and I discarded my daughter as I ran. She kept up with me for a few short strides, arms windmilling like crazy as she attempted to match my pace, but her little legs finally gave way and I saw her tumbling away and to the right out of the corner of my eye. In letting her go I also inadvertently let the car carrier slip off my arm and I heard the seat cracking and splintering in the bag behind me as it bounced along the floor before finally slamming into a group of trash cans on the far wall. I reached the door and hurled my body into it, banging my fists on its cold blue surface as hard as I could while yelling “PLEEEEEEAAASSE, DON’T LEAVE! NOOOOO! PLEASE, DEAR GOD DON’T LEAVE!” I waited for a moment. Then two. My sweat-soaked shirt was clinging to my back and my entire body ached as I fought the burning in my lungs. There was no answer. Only silence. We had missed our plane.
I let out a moan and began sobbing uncontrollably as I turned, my back now resting on the door and sank down to a sitting position, holding my head in my hands. The tears just flowed and I didn’t want to stop them. It was over. I had failed and we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in a dark, smelly terminal of Los Angeles International Airport.
As I sniffled and raised my head I peered out through the cloud of dust that was silently settling around me and paused. Something was not right. I glanced across the room at my wife, who was crouching down and cradling my daughter’s tiny battered body in her arms, then back around the room. The terminal was full of people. A lot of people. They were calmly reading papers, drinking coffee, surfing the internet on their laptops but, unanimously, they were all looking right at me. Some were smirking, some bore expressions of disbelief and bewilderment and some were whispering to each other but one thing was consistent. They were all looking at me.
As I attempted to process what was going on I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I looked up from the floor to see a kind-faced airline ticketing agent looking at me, almost as if in pity. I wiped tears from my eyes, blinked and stared at her.
“Sir. I’m sorry. I have to ask you to take a seat with the rest of the passengers and not block the door. The rest of the cleaning crew needs to get through so we can get your flight boarded and on it’s way. I’m very sorry for the delay. Please, sir.”
“But. We’re too late. The Flyaway. We ran. I don’t….I…”
“The plane just arrived at the gate, sir. It was delayed in Dallas. I’m surprised they didn’t tell you that at check-in. Now If I could please ask you to move once again we can start boarding the passengers and we’ll be underway.”
My jaw dropped as the room erupted into laughter. I rose slowly to my feet, and dusted myself off as the other passengers wailed hysterically, slapping each other on the back and pointing as I limped slowly, head hung low, back to where my family sat on the floor. When I reached them I took them both in my arms and embraced them before collapsing in an exhausted heap onto the floor, my head resting on my wife’s empty suitcase.
We made that flight. And we did it my way.
-Matt
We’ve got some awesome new Tea Collection merchandise coming up at RedSparks, our online baby boutique. Bookmark the link and check back in a few!
August 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Oh dear God in heaven…”Your boxers!” Wiping tears of mirth from my eyes as I can mentally picture the whole scene….
Kori´s last blog ..Um…
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@Kori, Yep. Gone. Every last pair of em. Even the glow-in-the-dark smiley face ones!
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August 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
CANNOT.STOP.LAUGHING!!!!!!!!!!!
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@McMommy, I’ve noticed that posts about my misfortune always seem to entertain you. Hmmm….
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McMommy Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
@Matt, You know when I’ll be crying and you’ll be laughing? When you are on the way to the bank with your fat book advance….
Don’t take a blog break!!! Keep writing! You crack us up!
McMommy´s last blog ..Coming Clean.
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August 25th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Laughing so hard I’m crying. God bless you!
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
@Kat, I’d be lying if I said that, while it was happening, I wasn’t thinking “this will be an AWESOME post.” Glad you liked it
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Kat Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
@Matt, I really did like it. Thanks to McMommy for linking to it =D
Kat´s last blog ..Torticollis
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August 25th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Yeah, um, I’d stay home…
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
@Coco, that might be the best advice anyone has ever given me. Ever.
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August 25th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I’ve flown enough to know exactly what was going to happen at the end, but I still couldn’t help laughing hysterically.
Sorry.
Jennifer´s last blog ..Check the attitude, Random Tuesday Thoughts
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
@Jennifer, no apology needed. Wish you had been there to let ME know what was going to happen!
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August 25th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
OOOOHHHHH MMMMYYYYY GGGGGOOOOODDDD!!!! I can’t stop laughing!!!!! I feel bad for you, but I can’t stop!!!!! What a GREAT post!!!
Liz´s last blog ..Oh, you’re THAT kind of Mexican…
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
@Liz, Yeah, right. I can tell you feel SO bad!
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August 25th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
totally just made working 3rd shift more enjoyable!! Glad you made your flight!
Kelly´s last blog ..Many More Random Thoughts and Pictures
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Matt Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
@Kelly, Glad I could help! I’ve been there…working third shift might be the ONLY thing worse than flying with little ones!
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August 26th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Griswolds!
Kids make us so stupid, they suck our brains right out.
That’s it!
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August 28th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
write the book already!..
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