October 25, 2008
Maybe Your Bag Has a Better Attitude
Low visibility at the Atlanta airport yesterday had air traffic backed up quite a bit.
I was delayed a couple of hours out of St. Louis; missed my connection home, and so had a lengthy wait for the last boat out of Atlanta.
It happens.
It also happens that I didn't have my noise cancelling headphones on me. This means I eavesdropped.
Really, I'm not sure it is considered eavesdropping if the folks are talking so loud it's impossible NOT to hear them. I'd head out to dictionary.com but believe the definition to be incidental to the story.
One loud lady had missed her connection and been rebooked on a flight that was supposed to leave at 10:30 PM out of B11.
When they called for boarding at B11, she got in line, and then was denied boarding. She was told she wasn't on THAT flight.
She then started demanding answers from the gate agent and was going to stand there until she got them.
(Not the best strategy.)
(The simple sign the woman had overlooked was the flight number. They were boarding one flight, she was on another. The time, gate, and destination were coincidental, and a result of backed-up flights.)
She said that she had to throw away a two-dollar cup of Starbucks coffee at her departure airport because "customs" wouldn't let her bring it on the plane. She said she couldn't understand why the airlines didn't allow a hot beverage on the plane.
(Since she was coming from El Paso, I did the math lightening fast in my head and figured that she was simply unaware that one couldn't take drinks through security. The leap she made to that meaning one couldn't take hot beverages on a plane was congruent with the rest of her logic.)
(But it didn't make it any less cringe-inducing to hear.)
She continued.
Since the rental car counter at her destination (by now I know it's the same as my destination) obviously would close at midnight, she didn't know how she was going to get where she needed to be.
(In reality, the rental car places stay open until the last flight comes in.)
When the woman finally hangs up the phone, she tries to engage me and another woman seated nearby in conversation by saying she's going to write a letter to Delta.
I don't bite. The other lady does.
They loudly banter their frustrations. And woe at their delays. And angst at the agents unable to increase visibility to greater than quarter of a mile and thus get them home on time.
I smile and pretend I don't understand English.
Then see two pilots sitting a few seats away. One of them looks like a famous actor. I picked up my bag and walked over to him and smiled and said excuse me and asked him if people tell him all the time he looks like anyone in particular.
"Yes."
I smiled again, said I thought so, begged forgiveness for interrupting, and started to walk away.
"Wait," he says. "Who?"
Half hour later, we're still chatting. In English. He's a million miles away, conversationally speaking, from the two women across the way.
(To mention male, and really attractive could possibly be redundant.)
He saw my new tattoo, commented on it, then showed me one of his, which involved pulling aside his shirt collar, so I showed him my first one, which also involved pulling aside my shirt collar, thus causing him to ask what it means, I tell him it's October in Japanese, he says he always wanted something like that but was afraid he'd walk out with something that was really offensive, and not know it.
"I took a dictionary with me."
"Smart woman."
The conversation led to him telling me he was 43 years old, and my telling him I'm 41.
He said I look amazing for 41.
It was all I could do to not quote Austin Powers out loud. (Your stock is rising number one.)
The man was funny, gregarious, and upbeat.
Libra wins. He balanced the previous half hour.
He had to get to work, and I needed to get to my gate.
Where there is one harried gate agent, and a not-yet-opened flight.
I take a seat and wait. And watch. And listen.
To the guy standing behind me saying it's all bullshit.
And to the two guys in line at the podium who missed their connections and demand to know if they will have seats on this flight.
Mary the gate agent tells them they need to go to customer service to get boarding passes. The flight isn't open yet and she can't help them.
They think it's bullshit now too. But they do go off and get their boarding passes. Their places in line are now taken by a single woman who has also missed her connection and is demanding to know whether she has a seat on this flight.
Mary tells her the same thing, but the woman doesn't take her advice. Instead she storms around the gate area also claiming bullshit.
And pretty soon here comes the lady from earlier in the evening.
And the two angry men come back with boarding passes and loudly try to convince the single woman storming around the gate area to really, go down to customer service, they will give her a boarding pass.
The guy standing right behind me tries to engage me in conversation by saying he doesn't understand why they cleared standbys on the previous flight and he didn't get a seat.
I smiled and shrugged slightly.
(Because they probably had, as the sign says, more current day travel interruptions, a higher ticket value, or higher priority status.)
He turns to the guy to his left and that guy bites. They both bitch until the boarding door opens. Neither of them know where their checked baggage is. They both had been told it may not make it on this flight.
Libra steps in, I get upgraded, and sit beside a man content to quietly sip his double scotch on the rocks.
When we finally land home, I claimed my bag, and heard the man that had been bitching beside me in the gate area say he KNEW that his bag had made the earlier flight and again questioned why he himself, did not.
I pondered out loud that perhaps his bag has a better attitude than he did. The man didn't hear me, but the lady grabbing her luggage right beside me laughed and said, "no kidding." (The man had bitched loudly the entire flight home.)
***
I am absolutely loving my new tattoo.
***
I met two men this week that had been in accidents severe enough they needed facial reconstructive surgery.
***
One of the students in my class this week, a former teacher himself, said he had never seen someone with such passion for their work who could keep such consistent intensity and pace for eight or more hours a day for an entire week.
(Earlier he had asked me whether I was exhausted at the end of the day. I said nope.)
***
So, Fenway. Game four of the series, second home game. When everything aligned, I sent a message to my cousin who lives outside of Boston. I'd buy the tickets if he'd go with me.
Well, duh.
So we went.
Time of my life.
(I'll mention this because it was a first for me. While waiting near the park for my cousin, a stranger asked me whether I was American Indian.)
(People routinely guess Italian, and then less specifically Asian.)
So my cousin arrives.
Funny enough, he's wearing his red Minnesota Twins ball cap, and I'm wearing my red Minnesota sweatshirt.
There wasn't a question that we were going to stop for a beer before the game. The question was where, and he gave me my choice - hopping and loud, or empty and quiet.
Empty and quiet.
He knows just the place.
So we walk a short way to a beautiful old building, go inside, get Shipyard Pumpkin beer (very good, I might add), then go through the bar, through a heavy wooden door and out onto a beautiful private patio. Including us, there were two people out there.
It was empty and quiet. And an utterly beautiful night, weather-wise, in Boston.
We talked and drank and then walked to the ball park. Where, seated behind the pesky pole, we talked and drank some more.
(Of course it was an awesome thing to pass through the turnstile. I put my arm through my cousins's arm and he capably steered me through the crowds as I watched, not at all, where I was going and instead read every sign and looked at every brick and kiosk and face and shirt and thing I could take in.)
(Including where the bathroom was.)
(We put a substantial hurt on the city's supply of Guinness.)
(My cousin has his company's car service on speed dial, so I was chauffeured back to my hotel before they drove him home.)
(My rental car spent the night in Boston and was none the worse for wear when I picked it up the next day.)
***
I regularly read dooce.
Doing so recently reminded me why I don't feel compelled to deal with comments here on pondring.
To be offhand (as opposed to Off hand, which if you look up are two different things) it's because I really don't care what people would write.
To the good, or to the bad, your opinions are yours and you are entitled to them. Thanks if you like it, go some place else if you don't.
It's not hard.
***
So a friend I met some years ago, but haven't heard from in a while recently joined some social networking site. I received an email, not from him, but on his behalf from the site saying that he had put me on a list and I had to click a button or he would think I didn't want to be his friend.
A day or two later I got a reminder email from the site saying I still had not clicked. And my friend "was waiting."
Another day or two later I got another reminder email.
Torass.
***
Posted by Angela Tanner at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)