The other day I was cleaning at work when I discovered some particularly stubborn substance cemented to a tabletop. Without thinking, I started working at it with my fingernail, with some pathetically proud “Ha! I’ve got you now!” thoughts running through my mind. After a few seconds of this, I removed myself (mentally) from the situation, and it slowly dawned on me that I had no idea what the hell this hardened goop was nor did I have any clue how long it had been there. Gross.
I am currently blogging from Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where Kayla and I are waiting for our connecting flight to Denver, which is delayed due to snowstorm of doom. After leaving Land of Sunshine, Warmth, and Everything Nice this morning, it is safe to say that I am not looking forward to stepping out of DIA into eight inches of snow in my (slightly tanned!) flip-flop clad feet.
I know everyone has their own air travel horror stories, and there’s only so much one wants to hear about how sucky airports can be, but I feel the need to tell our tale:
Kayla and I decided we were kicking off our spring break right when we ordered screwdrivers at an airport bar Monday morning before our flight. We were in good spirits, elated by how ridiculously smooth things can go when you don’t have to check any bags. Needless to say, we had time to kill, which we did by throwing back a few cocktails before our flight. We were not drunk, but did find ourselves awkwardly tipsy for it being 10 AM and all. So we’re sitting at our gate, giving ourselves big pats on the back for being so balla, and they start boarding. “Zone one,” drones the evil gate-guarder, as they do, and at this point we decide to check our tickets in order to adequately prepare ourselves for our own boarding order fate. I did a double, no, triple-take at my boarding pass. Zone 99, it read. ZONE 99. In my liquored up state, I peered around to the passengers around me, who were calmly packing their books, magazines, computers into their carry-ons. At mothers folding up their strollers, leisurely making their way to the gate. And I thought, “whaaaat..?” Slowly, they move through them- Two…. Three…. Four…. the minutes between each “zone” seemed like hours, days . Ninety-nine, I thought to myself, NINETY-NINE. And before we knew it, we were the only ones sitting on those all-attached-to-each-other, blue chairs. Which, of course, is when we gathered the sense to board the plane, zones be damned!! The subject came up while we were chatting with a flight attendant later: “Were you stand-by??” she asks, her perfectly penciled brow furrowed in confusion. Nope, not stand-by. Yes, checked in at a pathetically early time. Yes, our tickets read “Zone 99”
Normally I wouldn’t give a flying frickity what order we board. I always get so annoyed by those people that stand not-technically-in-line but right by it, so that they can jump in as soon as humanly possible. I never understood what the big rush was to go from sitting to… sitting. In an incredibly claustrophobic space. But Zone 99 taught me about overhead bins. See, it seems they get all full of other people’s stuff. When we finally board, the flight attendant sees Kayla with her bag and literally lunges for it. “We’re going to have to check this!!!” she barks. I always thought that flight attendants were trained to remain calm in almost any situation, but this crazy defined the term “high-strung.” When Kayla is panicked, when she is thrown into any stressful situation, her usual reaction is fight. And I mean FIGHT. While my stupid “flight” personality would have probably said “oh ummm okay, maam,” Kayla jerked her bag back towards her, you know, kung-fu grip. Okay at this point I’m going to stop telling this story, because it was basically that scene from “Meet the Parents,” just played out right in front of me. I saw in my mind the headlines, “College students kicked off AirTran flight.” The law suit. The counter-law suit. The “how was your spring break?” “ohhh… well, we never actually made it… see…” explanations.
But despite my worries I soon found myself on my way to beautiful Florida, slight hangover headache and light sensitivity all before noon. We rock.
The moral of this story was going to be “Don’t Fly AirTran,” but I’m pretty sure it’s just “Don’t Fly.” Which shouldn’t be a problem because I’m just going to date a vampire and then he’ll just carry me wherever I want to go really quickly. Suck it, Zone 99.
Our trip was beautiful; I successfully finished three novels pool side, burning pretty much every surface of my body in the process. But it’s totally fine because now I’m a big peeling ball of freckles. Sexy. But seriously, doing absolutely nothing but lounging in the sunshine is my type of vacay.
There were a few incidents throughout the week of people thinking we were much younger than we actually were, accompanied by some all around, general smarminess (holy balls that word is actually in the spell check dictionary):
Incident #1:
Shop Owner (orange, 50 year old man): Hello, how are you today?
Kay&Jan: Great, how are you?
Shop Owner: Well, I would be a lot better if I were a teenage girl like you.
Kay&Jan: (stunned silence)
Shop Owner: If I were a teenage girl I’d be spending my day on the beach, though, not at the shops.
Kay&Jan: (horrified, stunned silence)
Shop Owner: And I would be a lot better if I were rich like you.
Kay&Jan: (confused, stunned silence- when I relayed this story to my Aunt later, she asked, “were you wearing any blinged-out giant diamonds that you were somehow unaware of?” I checked. We weren’t.)
I should have walked out right then and there, but I saw this really cute bracelet I absolutely needed, and it was only 3 dollars. God, I’m so frickin rich.
Incident #2:
Edward: Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, this is Edward speaking, how can I help you?
Me: Hi, um, we’re trying to order a movie On Demand, and it’s not working.
Edward: Okay, can I get a phone number to identify the account?
Me: Yeah, umm, hold on… Sorry I’m just at my aunt’s house so I don’t know the number… (As I’m walking to the other room to ask my aunt)
Edward: Ohhhh… you’re at your aunt’s house. That’s probably why. Your parents probably set it up so you couldn’t watch a movie because it’s past your bedtime.
Me: Ummm…. What??
Edward: Heh heh, you know they can do that, they probably didn’t trust your aunt to do a good job watching you.
Me: (stunned silence, per usual. Mostly caused by mentally calculating how far off his guess-timation of my age is seeing that he thinks I require a babysitter)
My Aunt (reading my face): Do you need me to talk to him??
Me (in my head): Christ, I am a child.
Me (to Edward): blah blah phone number account information
Edward: Okay, just hang on a second.
TLC: Don’t go chasing waterfalls… (On hold)
Edward: Okay, Jayyyy-na (at some point I told him my name), I just talked to your parents and they said it was okay for you to watch it. Heh heh heh.
Me: Errrr okay, thanks.
I hate when people “tease” you when all you want them to do is their job. No, I don’t want jokingly pretend your company’s software glitch was somehow orchestrated by my parents. That’s retarded. Not to mention absolutely impossible. And I'm 21 years old.
Comcast should start outsourcing.
Jan
