How a Seemingly Innocuous Day Degenerated into a Flight to the Wrong Country as a Perpetrator of Domestic Violence
The day came upon me harmless enough, introducing itself through the annoying yet innocuous means of my alarm clock. My sister, Bethanie, has lived in Haiti for several years, and i have yet to visit her there. That was all going to change today. I moseyed out of my friend's house where I had spent the night about 30 minutes later than originally planned, but early enough to still catch my flight to Port au Prince.
I returned the rental car without incident, and caught the shuttle to LaGuardia. I had just flown in there the day before. Oddly, the automatic check in kiosk wouldn't issue me a boarding pass and instructed me to speak to an agent. This entailed standing in a long line for 20 minutes, the only entertainment being the irate man berating a ticket agent for her insistence on charging him $200 for some service the airline was wishing to provide him.
I finally reached the ticket agent and stated that the machine had been unable to help me. She examined the gibberish that the machine had printed out for me, and explained that it seemed to think that there was a problem with my departure city.
The feeling of realization that came over me is akin only to that experienced by those who have a dream where they are in the middle of giving a public speech only to realize that they are half clothed. My worst dream of that nature was one in which I was doing a leg amputation and realized that I had amputated the left leg instead of the right leg. That kind of a dream is a terrible sinking feeling at its worst. Fortunately, the amputation dream resolved itself by the discovery that the patient was on his stomach rather than his back and the correct leg had been amputated after all, but I digress.
I suddenly realized that I was at the wrong airport. I was supposed to be at JFK, but was actually at LaGuardia. There was no way to get over there and checked in before the departure of my flight.
The ticket agent at JFK was helpful. In fact, she went way beyond helpful. She booked me standby on a flight to Miami and then on to Haiti the next morning. There was no fee for this even though it was obviously my fault. Furthermore, she refused to charge me a baggage fee even though one of my suitcases was overweight by 2 lbs. I like nice people, and am not accustomed to finding many of them working in airports.
I then made my way through the security process and to the departure gate. The flight to Miami looked very full, and the standby list had 13 names on it including my own. Things did not look good for me. They started boarding the plane, and it soon became apparent who my fellow standby participants were. One was an African gentleman who appeared to be Somali and didn't speak much English. He got in the boarding line repeatedly only to be told each time to wait for his name to be called by the boarding agents. Another man kept going to the counter every few minutes to see if he had a seat yet. A tired looking man was slumped in the corner not looking too hopeful. A young woman with a baseball cap, two black and blue eyes, and some other very impressive facial bruises kept anxiously looking at the standby list between applying makeup in a hopelessly inadequate attempt to conceal the evidence of whatever incident had occurred in her life.
Finally everyone was boarded, and the standby list was down to 9 people. I gave up hope of making it on that flight. About 10 minutes later they called my name and one other one saying that we had seats on the flight. I was overjoyed as I collected my ticket. The stewardess instructed me and the lady with the black and blue eyes to follow her to our seats as they were in a hurry and needed to depart quickly.
It turns out that our seats were at the very back of the plane. As I walked past all of the plane's passengers, following the stewardess and the lady with the bruises, I realized that lots of people were glaring at me! It dawned on me that since this lady and I were boarding the plane together 10 minutes after everyone else, people thought I must be the source of her black and blue eyes!
Even though I was flying to the wrong country and was viewed by many as the perpetrator of domestic violence, I was just very grateful to be on board and hope to make it to the correct airport at the correct time tomorrow.
I returned the rental car without incident, and caught the shuttle to LaGuardia. I had just flown in there the day before. Oddly, the automatic check in kiosk wouldn't issue me a boarding pass and instructed me to speak to an agent. This entailed standing in a long line for 20 minutes, the only entertainment being the irate man berating a ticket agent for her insistence on charging him $200 for some service the airline was wishing to provide him.
I finally reached the ticket agent and stated that the machine had been unable to help me. She examined the gibberish that the machine had printed out for me, and explained that it seemed to think that there was a problem with my departure city.
The feeling of realization that came over me is akin only to that experienced by those who have a dream where they are in the middle of giving a public speech only to realize that they are half clothed. My worst dream of that nature was one in which I was doing a leg amputation and realized that I had amputated the left leg instead of the right leg. That kind of a dream is a terrible sinking feeling at its worst. Fortunately, the amputation dream resolved itself by the discovery that the patient was on his stomach rather than his back and the correct leg had been amputated after all, but I digress.
I suddenly realized that I was at the wrong airport. I was supposed to be at JFK, but was actually at LaGuardia. There was no way to get over there and checked in before the departure of my flight.
The ticket agent at JFK was helpful. In fact, she went way beyond helpful. She booked me standby on a flight to Miami and then on to Haiti the next morning. There was no fee for this even though it was obviously my fault. Furthermore, she refused to charge me a baggage fee even though one of my suitcases was overweight by 2 lbs. I like nice people, and am not accustomed to finding many of them working in airports.
I then made my way through the security process and to the departure gate. The flight to Miami looked very full, and the standby list had 13 names on it including my own. Things did not look good for me. They started boarding the plane, and it soon became apparent who my fellow standby participants were. One was an African gentleman who appeared to be Somali and didn't speak much English. He got in the boarding line repeatedly only to be told each time to wait for his name to be called by the boarding agents. Another man kept going to the counter every few minutes to see if he had a seat yet. A tired looking man was slumped in the corner not looking too hopeful. A young woman with a baseball cap, two black and blue eyes, and some other very impressive facial bruises kept anxiously looking at the standby list between applying makeup in a hopelessly inadequate attempt to conceal the evidence of whatever incident had occurred in her life.
Finally everyone was boarded, and the standby list was down to 9 people. I gave up hope of making it on that flight. About 10 minutes later they called my name and one other one saying that we had seats on the flight. I was overjoyed as I collected my ticket. The stewardess instructed me and the lady with the black and blue eyes to follow her to our seats as they were in a hurry and needed to depart quickly.
It turns out that our seats were at the very back of the plane. As I walked past all of the plane's passengers, following the stewardess and the lady with the bruises, I realized that lots of people were glaring at me! It dawned on me that since this lady and I were boarding the plane together 10 minutes after everyone else, people thought I must be the source of her black and blue eyes!
Even though I was flying to the wrong country and was viewed by many as the perpetrator of domestic violence, I was just very grateful to be on board and hope to make it to the correct airport at the correct time tomorrow.
posted by The Mad Hatter at 1:20 PM
2 Comments:
Yes, I’ll admit it I laughed. Karlin
This reminds me of the time I needed information on divorce laws and procedures for a story I was writing. Failing to find what I needed, in desperation I made an appointment with a lawyer. I told him I needed some information on divorce laws for a book I was writing. From his comments it soon became apparent that he thought I wanted a divorce and was just using the book line as a cover up. He changed his tune when I told him I need to know about divorce laws in the 1960s.
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