It started out like any other early morning travel day, with my phone alarm joyfully calling out to me at 4am "Hey buddy, let's go attack this day with the force of a thousand suns!" and me groggily groaning and clawing towards the sound of the Marimba ringtone relentlessly mocking me from the nightstand. "I'll end your contract, you devil phone! Seriously!" I say to myself out loud. This statement prompted my iPhone to summon the evil Siri, and a brief argument ensued. Siri can be an absolutely ruthless bitch early in the morning.
Southwest is not my go-to airline. I have absolutely no status when I book flights on Southwest, so I usually end up in 55th spot within group W. I'm so low in frequent flyer status with Southwest that I'm not allowed off the plane until the last person has left the plane, and I have thoroughly scrubbed the toilets and wiped down each one of the seat trays. And so because of this, I have found no value in downloading their phone app. I received my boarding pass via email, which I was now pulling up while a stale 4am haze clouded my tired eyes.
I struggled through my squinty morning eyes to make out the time of 720a as the boarding time for my 750a flight to Nashville, where I would get my connection to New Orleans. Why am I getting up so damn early? I know that I still needed to pack, and shower, but the drive to the airport can take 40 minutes on a bad day, so I had plenty of time. I decided against returning to bed, and instead, I shifted into low gear. I must admit, it was nice to not be in a rush for a change. I decided to iron a dress shirt this morning since I would be headed right to work once I landed at 8:45am. That’s right, I just said that my flight was supposed to land in New Orleans at 8:45am. If I would have been able to drain the sleep from my brain for just a few seconds, I could have processed the fact that it would have been absolutely impossible for me to have a 7:50am flight out of Philadelphia that would get me anywhere close to New Orleans in less than an hour! Plus I had a connection in Nashville! But since I was content with continuing to be a half-asleep, early morning zombie dipshit, I continued to happily hum the Marimba ringtone as I got ready to leave the house in slow motion. Not a care in the world.
As I walk towards the door of the bedroom with suitcase in tow, I stop and crawl over the still warm outline of my sleeping body on the bed, and reach to kiss Tara goodbye. “Make sure you have your wallet and ID” she mumbles as if it were part of a dream. This has become a regular ritual since the time I missed my flight due to a wallet malfunction. I creep to the staircase in the dark, as to attempt to get out of the house without waking the kids or making the dog bark uncontrollably like a terrier with Tourette syndrome. "Bark f###-itty bark bark bark! And more bark! Bark again! Ok, I’m done now. Bark! Everyone up now? Ok great, I’m going back to sleep and I will also sleep all day. Bark once more just to be an asshole!"
That was my impression of my dog.
I take one step onto the stairs that I had completely misjudged in the darkness, and I end up taking at least 3 steps in one stride and lunging forward as though someone just shoved me to see how much life insurance I had. I grabbed for the handrail and luckily connected to it, and was also able to stop the momentum of my suitcase from taking me down the rest of the stairs. The “dark staircase with luggage” should be an obstacle on American Ninja Warrior. I made it the rest of the way down the stairs without a funeral procession, and walked in complete darkness towards the soft electric glow coming from a crack in my office door. After pushing open the office door, I grabbed my work bag, and lifted my warm laptop from its workstation. The laptop beeped several times at me in protest as I stuffed it into my bag, aggressively reprimanding me for all of the windows and apps that I had irresponsibly left idling through the night. Several important papers that were in my bag had crumpled themselves now into paper fans at the bottom of my bag under the oppression of a heavy laptop.
Back into the dark abyss of the house, I feel around for the handle of my luggage, and head towards the door. As I open the door to the garage and press the button to the garage door opener, “Bark! Bark! Barkity-####-ing bark-bark, mother ####-er! And more barking and whatnot. Bark! I’m Bob Barker! And another bark! Barks for all. Bark the Harold angels sing!”
Great. And next, the sound of tiny feet running from my 3-year-old’s room into the master bedroom as Tourettes The Terrier goes into a tirade of canine cussing. If the dog still exists when I get back home from my trip, I’ll be surprised. “Shut up, dog!” I hear as I softly close the door behind me. I walk through the garage and out into the thick, humid morning air with luggage following behind. Random annoying birds repetitively call out for the sun to rise up, and I toss my suitcase and work bag into the trunk and walk to the side of the house. It’s trash day. I have primadonna garbage men that arrive very early in the morning, and expect the garbage cans to be aligned in a specific fashion, or they will passive-aggressively retaliate by throwing a half-empty can on your front lawn, or make the can disappear entirely. I tilt the garbage can towards me onto its wheels, and promptly receive a fresh coating of garbage can water on my pant leg and shoes. Nice. After wheeling the assassin receptacle to the street, I ensure they are properly spaced at four feet from any other surrounding cans, and both wheels are resting snug against the curb creating the required ninety degree angle. I make a final inspection of the trash cans and I hop into the car for a leisurely drive to the airport. It wasn’t even 5:30am yet, so I decided to grab coffee on the way. I would probably even have time to pick up breakfast at the airport before boarding the flight. I felt a strange sensation of calm sweep over me. This was definitely not my typical “beat the clock” rush to make an early morning flight.
I continued humming the Marimba ringtone on an infinite loop as I approached the pothole riddled off ramp to the airport.
And in an instant, that strange feeling of calm was yanked from me, like someone attempting the old “dinner place settings are still standing after pulling the tablecloth from underneath” trick. The calm was simultaneously replaced with a familiar feeling of chaos and anxiety. There is absolutely no way that there are 2,907 available parking spots in parking garage A! I cautiously took the bait of the digital parking space display, and headed into the entrance to the garage with incredible scrutiny. Something was definitely wrong, as hundreds of parking spaces claim to be available on the very first level of Garage A. I pulled of the parking ramp and was immediately met by a long stretch of chain link fence as far as I could see. “Please pardon our dust”, the sign read. Guess what? It’s not the dust that bothers me. I looped around and continued up to the next level where I was met with déjà vu, another long fence stretching out into the distance, apologizing for the inconvenience of dust particulates. Hundreds of vacant parking options exhibited frustratingly within reach, yet incarcerated in cruel cages.
I drove parallel to the fence toward the connection which would place me in Garage B. I quickly found that Garage B was a mirror image of Garage A, with hundreds of empty parking spaces safely locked away from frantic passengers. I repeated this same observation in Garages C, D and E before arriving at Garage F. I began calculating the cost of checking my car as baggage with Southwest when I surprisingly saw a handful of available parking spaces that were roaming about in a cage-free environment. I pulled in to the first open spot that I came to, and quickly gathered my bags so I could briskly walk to the security gate. It was nearly 6am, and I wanted to try and grab something to eat before boarding my 720am flight.
With my boarding pass pulled up on my phone, I proceeded with confidence to the entrance to the security line. There I was quickly stopped by a TSA agent, who pointed out that I had the wrong boarding pass pulled up. “That’s not for this airport” he said apathetically. Confused, I looked down at my phone and examined it through awake and caffeinated eyes. Nashville to New Orleans. That's when I could feel the blood leave my head. Well, that’s a first. I’ve never gone to the wrong airport before, and seeing that Nashville is not so much within driving distance, there had to be an explanation. I stepped aside and frantically searched through emails. This was the only boarding pass that came through my email, so after several attempts at fat-finger typing SOUTHWEST into the subject search line, I finally managed to find the boarding pass for my plane to Nashville from Philly, which was leaving in 4 minutes. That's just enough time to make you feel like it might still be possible to get to the plane before it leaves, and yet also just enough time to know that you are a complete idiot if you think that making the flight is even a possibility in this universe.
Have you ever wanted to punch yourself in the face?
I sullenly sauntered to the ticketing counter, defeated. After waiting in a line of about 350,000 people, I was finally face to face with a ticketing agent. I felt like I was before a judge in court, pleading for leniency. “Let me start by saying that I’m an idiot” I began. There was absolutely no expression on her face, so I knew this verbal exchange was going to be painful.
“How can I help you?” she said robotically.
“It looks like I screwed up my trip. See I was looking at this boarding pass, but this is actually for my connection out of Nashville, my flight from here to Nashville was…”
“You missed your flight?” She interrupted.
“Well… yes. See I was looking at this other boarding pass and…”
“Did you oversleep?”
I looked back at her puzzled, as I didn’t know what that had to do with her helping me, and at the same time I was wondering if there was a specific answer I was supposed to provide that would send me on my way. If I HAD overslept, would she refuse to help me, as her judgmental tone might suggest? “No, I actually woke up really early!”
“Mmmm hmmm. Well, I can get you on standby at 8:40am to St. Louis. If you make that, you will be on standby to New Orleans out of St. Louis at 10:20am.”
This option had me flying a triangle shape to get to New Orleans, and would easily put me back 4 hours, but I didn’t have any other options. Before handing me the security pass, the woman at the ticketing counter was quick to point out that I should have noticed that the connecting boarding pass was the wrong one. She also reminded me that my flight out of Philadelphia left at 6am. These were two pieces of information that were not helpful to me in the present. It was also the only time that she somewhat smiled.
After navigating through security relatively unscathed, I managed to find some airport prison food, and headed to my gate to check in at the podium. When I reached the gate, I found that the flight to St Louis was delayed. A line of passengers waited at the desk to check on connections, and I joined them to inquire about my St. Louis flight. We were told to gather around for announcement, and a drill Sargent with a red scarf around her neck boomed, “Listen up people, we are going to swap out airplanes so we can get y’all outta here by 9am! We absolutely need to be pushing back by 9am at the latest, or you guys are going to miss your connections. So when we start the boarding process, just get seated as quickly as possible. I don’t want to sound mean, but forget about looking for your favorite seat, and just get butts in seats so we can all get where we need to be!”
She proceeded to announce all of the connections that we would still be on time for, and there was no mention of St. Louis. I approached the desk to inquire about the chances of me making that flight with a 20 minute delay. “You were supposed to be on the 6am to Nashville, right? We were paging for you, didn’t you hear us?”
“No, I missed that flight and had to get this one to St. Louis instead”
“Did you sleep in or something?”
“No, I woke up too early. Do you think I’ll be able to make my New Orleans connection?”
“It’s gonna be close, but you should be okay. Just go straight to the gate when you land. Got it?”
We all quickly boarded the airplane like a well-trained military operation. I’ve never seen people help one another like I did on this day. Folks that were usually left to struggle lifting their heavy bag into the overhead compartments with at least a dozen people eye-rolling them to death, were met with no less than five people offering to carry, lift or cram whatever needed to be put into place for us to get off the ground by 9am. This had to be one of the fastest plane boardings in Southwest history.
With everyone’s seatbelts secured, we were pushing away from the gate just 2 minutes before 9am. Success! People were high-fiving each other, and singing songs, confetti and balloons fell from the ceiling, and I think there were even a few fireworks. All was right with the world. And then… we proceeded to sit for more than 30 minutes on the tarmac, waiting to take off.
It was a short flight to St. Louis, and as we prepared to land, I just assumed that I would need to find other flight arrangements, when an announcement came over the overhead speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have contacted all of the gates where your connections are made, and they are all going to hold their planes for 20 minutes. Please make your way directly to your gate once you get off this airplane.
Once we landed, of course I had to run across the entire airport to the furthest gate, and up to the desk for my boarding pass.
"Sorry, this flight is completely full", she said with a straight face as she handed me back my standby slip.
Then, nothing. We stared at each other. Do I talk first? Does she talk first? I obviously need to be someplace else. I was perplexed that she would assume my reaction to a full flight would be, "okay #### it, St. Louis is close enough I guess, I'll just stay here.”
So I broke the staring contest with a question that I am thinking that they might hear a lot in these types of situations, "so... what do I do now?" Seemingly somewhat surprised by my query, she began typing into their 1970's computer terminal which quickly found me a flight that would have me on my way to New Orleans in less than five hours. I can't express the joys of spending several hours at the St. Louis airport.
"Did you miss a flight?" She asked.
"Yes, I missed this flight, and I missed one earlier this morning” I replied.
"Did you oversleep?" The condescension was so heavy that it would require a baggage fee.
What the... "Actually, I under-slept, which I think was part of the problem."
I walked from the podium with my ticket to misery. Spending even three hours in the St. Louis Airport was comparable to purgatory, I was going to be there for five. It was almost enough time to find a part time job at one of the airport kiosks or coffee shops. Lambert International Airport is exactly how I would picture airports 900 year ago, before things like “electricity” or “common sense”.
There's a kiosk that I must have walked by at least 13 times. I stopped each time so that I could admire airport capitalism, which is one of the deepest and richest American traditions since the first aeronautic entrepreneur sold someone a place to stand and watch the flight of the Wright Brother's Kitty Hawk back in the 1300's or whenever. The turkey sandwich caught my attention, because it was nicely rounded up to an even $20, or four easy payments of $5. If I'm paying twenty dollars for a turkey sandwich, someone better chew it for me. It looked as though it had been thoroughly chewed already, and crammed into its plastic display case. Okay, so the turkey sandwich was reasonably priced, but $7 for a bag of pretzels? If I ever pay $7 for a bag of broken pretzels... never mind.
If you are lucky enough to be a prisoner in the Southwest terminal of Lambert, you don’t really have any food options. I turned a suspicious eye towards the Schlafly Restaurant, which from twenty feet away, smelled like nineteen different types of butt. It seriously smelled like a rotting bar mat that was being used as a fermentation reservoir for thirty anonymous alcohols until they morphed into a 120 proof, thick, gooey slime. Everything about this place screamed out staph infection. I kept walking.
About forty seconds later, I was at the end of the terminal. My only other option for food, was the already-been-chewed-kiosk-turkey sandwich, or the mystery meat-ish wares of an airport street vendor whom I discerned was not officially permitted to sell food in this airport. So back to staph infection I go.
There were no other customers seated at staph infection, so I grabbed myself a table towards the walkway of the airport terminal, because it seemed safer to have potential passersby as witnesses. I wheeled my bag over a couple of stale French fries that had escaped their fate quite some time ago, and I noticed one wheel bounce over a fry, while another wheel got jammed up in one like I had hit a rock, and sanded down the fry on the floor tile a few inches until I sat down in my chair. I rested my elbows onto the wooden table, and when I reached for the menu, I found that my arms had been superglued to the table by a compound of dirty table rag, spilled beer and unknown food adhesives. I checked to ensure the skin on my elbows was still intact.
As I sat in restaurant hell, I pondered the exact moment that my life went in this direction. Perhaps it was the toxic fumes of the bar mat twenty feet from me that was putting me into a hallucinogenic trance, but I thought to myself, “What if my entire life has led me to this one moment, and this is the best it’s going to get from here on out?” I shuddered and perhaps vomited slightly in my mouth, and I’m also pretty sure that I let out a short scream that only a dog would be able to hear.
A server came by after several minutes attending to the empty establishment, and asked me what I would like. Antibiotics? A sedative? A clean table? Fresh air? My elbow skin back? World peace? All of these things seemed somewhat unattainable, so I decided to go with a beer and something that wasn’t reliant on being any certain temperature as to avoid sickness or death.
I honestly don’t really remember much about the airport after I ate.
Several hours later, I finally reached New Orleans, working late into the night as penance for my boarding pass mix-up. I attended a meeting the following day, and was again heading back to the airport to catch a late night flight through Nashville. It was interesting to me that my travel ended up being twice the amount of time than what I spent at the work functions that I was actually traveling for.
I checked into the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, which is a pretty easy airport to get out of. My connection back through Nashville would put me on a redeye flight that landed in Philly early the next morning. I can't sleep on airplanes. For me, the two-inch-seat-recline isn't enough for me to fall asleep in. It amuses me when I watch people recline their seats, and then with shear brute force, attempt to make the seat recline past the limit of the seat recline button. Then there are the seat-recline bouncers, who are those people that think repetitious rocking will unlock the seat recline limits. Then there are those people that try bringing their seat back fully upright, and trying again, as though it is a shoulder seat belt in the back seat of a car that just got locked up before making it completely around the lunch in your belly. There are also those people that will try pushing the seat recline button of another armrest, hoping in vain that perhaps they were pushing the wrong one. Surely the seat should slide comfortably back like a lay-z-boy recliner as their legs slowly prop up at a 45 degree angle while a choir of angels looks down and sing a harmonious tune and sheep hop happily over a fence. And finally, there are those people that try a combination of all of the above, even desperately looking for a pattern that will unlock comfortability, including the famous pattern that is the explanation for the existence of the human race...Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A and Start.
So reclining isn't an option for me, and the seat in front is too close for me to be able to rest my head on the germ infested tray table and be comfortable. Sitting with my head comfortably resting on my knees just isn't my preferred sleeping position. In fact, I see it as more of a punishment than a resting position. One time I cleverly stacked my belongings up on the tray table to form a lumpy pillow, and I was able to fall asleep. My arms were underneath my work bag and jacket, with my left elbow resting on the arm rest. Being able to fall asleep on an airplane was a very rare and historic event for me. Unfortunately, when I woke up about an hour later, I had no feeling in that arm from my left wrist to the tip of my fingers. A nerve in my elbow was pinched by the position which I was pressing it down upon the armrest. I had significant nerve damage, and would not have any feeling in my pinky finger for about five months! You would be surprised how clumsy you can become when your pinky decides to constantly fight with your brain. I thought about going to see a doctor about it, but then I took to the internet and searched for people with similar symptoms to find a legit diagnosis. As it turns out, either I was going to lose my arm completely, or the feeling would eventually return up to a year later. If the feeling were to come back, I would experience several days of "pins and needles" one would expect to have after several months of a limb being in a deep sleep, if not, a coma. Luckily for me, the feeling eventually returned in my hand.
I was able to make it to Nashville without incident, and arrived at the gate for my connection where I was again delayed. I apologized to all of the passengers that were waiting patiently for the flight update, and explained to those around me about my travel karma. I got a few more followers to my travel blog as a result. If you are reading this, and I spoke to you at the Nashville airport, then yes, I’m talking to you now. An announcement was made that the plane would begin boarding about 25 minutes late, and that they would try to make up some time in the air. The pilot estimated that we would arrive in Philadelphia just after 1am.
I have a travel routine, as I've stated before. That routine includes my parking strategy at the Philadelphia airport. When I have a red eye return flight, I like to park in the same terminal as my departure gate, since the return flight SHOULD arrive back at the same terminal, and I can just head straight out to my car. If I have a return flight that gets me back at a reasonable time, I typically park in the A terminal, where I can usually find parking, and the security gates are usually pretty quiet since there aren't many international flights leaving that early in the morning. So I either have an easy in, or easy out situation. Except I had neither of these for this trip. The management staff of the Philadelphia International Airport, in their infinite wisdom, felt it would be wise to have construction work going on in every parking garage and on every floor. This effectively eliminated thousands of parking spaces, and limited my options considerably. I would end up parking in terminal F, which was a crappy beginning, and shitty end to my trip.
Another routine that I have, which happens immediately after I park at the airport, I place the parking ticket in my wallet, and I note my parking location on my phone Including level and row information. This trip I only completed about 50% of this routine. With parking ticket slid securely into the back of my wallet, I skipped along carefree into the hellish abyss of PHL as the parking garage elevator doors closed behind me. By the time I would get to the security gate, I wouldn't be able to tell you where my car was parked, or which car I drove that day, even if my life depended on it.
This all started coming back to me the minute my Nashville plane touched down in Philadelphia just after 1am on Friday morning. I managed to pull my phone from my left pants pocket, and opened my Notes app on my phone, where I should have found the parking location typed in. Instead, I saw a note of where my car was parked two weeks prior. I also saw a recipe for BBQ ribs below that, which is an amazing recipe, but equally unhelpful at this particular time. I went through the other notes on my phone, and even checked my calendar, just to see if I had typed where I have parked in that application by accident. I would have been better off walking up to a complete stranger and asking them if they knew where my car was parked. Then I got out my other phone, and checked that one. Thankfully, the information wasn't on either phone, and so I get to go on another adventure!
As I collected my belongings in anticipation of walking off the airplane, I started walking backwards in my head, attempting to recreate my arrival at the airport earlier in the week. I remembered that Philadelphia is the shittiest airport in the known universe, so I knew that I had to keep driving until I got to the furthest parking garage due to the poorly strategized construction. This is good news, I have effectively eliminated five parking structures! That narrows my search to just about 2,500 parking spaces within a six-level garage. And if most of those spaces are not occupied, that means there are even less possibilities of those being the spots in which I parked. Wait, that just made absolutely NO sense.
I groggily grab my bag from the overhead, making sure not to conk anyone over the head with it, which is more than I can say for the guy across from me. After rubbing my forehead and checking my hand for fresh blood from a well-placed luggage wheel strike, I dragged myself off the plane and up the sloped ramp to the terminal. The airport was a ghost town, with security gates firmly locked to the ground in front of darkened restaurants, coffee machines, neck pillow displays and $20 turkey sandwiches. A tumbleweed bounces along past me along the long tiled hallway, and no doubt vultures circling high above the ceiling. All escalators and moving walkways are turned off for your inconvenience at this hour. I had a great investigative lead on where my car might be, and so I break off from the pack of weary passengers, and head towards the signs that directed me to terminal F. It wasn't long before I felt like I was a burglar. There was less and less lighting, and the time seemed to be growing between the times that I was coming into contact with cleaning employees. This was surprising, because having spent enough time at the Philadelphia airport, I was convinced that nothing was ever cleaned.
I pressed on past terminal E when I heard someone shout, "HEY!".
I took a few more steps before realizing that the "Hey" might have been directed at me. I turned to see a security guard approaching me from the closed exit doors of terminal E. "These terminals are closed, you need to exit through A. I don't know why you are walking around a closed airport!"
"Did you say Terminal 'A' as in, 'Attitude'?", I replied. "And just so you know, I'm not walking 'around a closed airport' for early morning exercise, I'm trying to get to my car, which might be parked in garage F. My plane just landed, so I'm not sure how the airport can be closed."
"The only exit open at this time is 'A', so you need to come back the direction that you came. You should have exited as soon as you got off the plane."
The irony of being told I should have exited through another closed terminal exit, once my plane landed at terminal 'C' was mind-boggling. Also infuriating was the fact that I walked past numerous security guards and airport employees a few terminals back, and not one person felt compelled to tell me that I was walking towards a dead end. And so after walking fifteen minutes in the wrong direction, I was about to add a good 45 minutes to the walk back to my car. I was going to now walk backwards through the alphabet until I reached terminal 'A', and THEN I would get to exit the airport and traverse an outdoor maze to get all the way back to terminal 'F'.
After a few days of hiking, I had reached the infamous Terminal F parking garage. This was the "last chance" garage before the forgotten wasteland of the economy parking lot. I walked aisle by aisle, repetitiously pressing the door lock button on the car remote, and straining my ears to listen for the friendly chirp of my car. Surprisingly, it didn't take long before I could hear the chirp off in the distance, and I followed the faint sound like a zombie following the scent of a fresh brain. The irony being the fact that no zombie would be following me today. Before long, I was at my car, and popped the trunk with the button on the remote. I zipped the keys into the outer pocket of my work bag, and tossed my bags into the trunk.
As my hand slides off the trunk of the car and it slams shut, I realize that I had just placed my car keys into my work bag. The problem with that, is that my work bag was now in the trunk, which was closed. I didn’t even realize that the key was the reason that I was suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible feeling. As the trunk slammed, the echo of that slam radiated off the concrete walls of the parking structure, and bounced back to my ears as the voice of my trunk yelling, “I just ate your car keys, you dumbass!” I immediately pulled at the trunk, only to find that I’ve never closed a trunk so good in my entire life. I looked around. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I was hoping that there might be a chance of catching a glimpse of a worm hole to another dimension or alternate universe where I wasn’t a complete asshole who locked his only car key inside of his trunk. Perhaps I was looking around hoping to find that I only imagined that I put my bag in the trunk, and I would find my bag standing behind me smiling, and saying something like, “Haha, just kidding!”
But there was no worm hole, or laughing luggage to be found. There was just me standing there at two o’clock in the morning on a weekday in complete disbelief at my good fortune. Before I launch myself into level five panic, I casually and confidently walk to the driver’s side door and attempt to open it. This is when I discover that the trunk of the car is exactly far enough away from the door that the key fob will not allow the doors to unlock.
I grab my wallet from my back pocket and thumb through a rolodex of business cards and credit cards until landing on a white plastic AAA card. It glowed as I pulled it from my wallet like Excalibur, and lit up most of the garage. It was so blinding that I almost didn’t notice the expiration date on the bottom. My membership expired a month ago. Surely I could work out something with the AAA operator on the other end of the phone, once they hear how authentically pathetic I sound as I explained my situation. Most of the illumination from the AAA card had faded, except for the faint glow of the 800 number that I needed to call. I reached for my cell phone, only to discover that my cell phone was inside a travel pouch. The problem was that the travel pouch was inside my headphone case, which was inside my work bag, which was inside the trunk which was locked. I don’t know why the trunk was locked, perhaps I’ll die.
As I look for a nearby brick in which to Dirty Dancing my way into the passenger window, I realize I didn’t try the foot sensor feature of the car, which allows you to open the trunk hands-free by waving your foot underneath it. This was a feature that I thought was silly and frivolous when it was being shown to me at the car dealership. “This feature is silly and frivolous”, I told the car salesman in a flashback that I conveniently placed here for this part of the story. The car salesman didn’t answer back, because he was not in an airport parking structure locked out of his car at 2am on a weekday morning. Once the flashback was finished, I approach the trunk of my car and stick my left foot out underneath the car and do the hokey-pokey. The trunk leaps to life and the opens to light up my face like the suitcase from the movie Pulp Fiction. “Woo!” I shout out like Rick Flair, “That’s what it’s all about!” Off in the distance, I hear another traveler in the parking structure respond with his own “Woo!’ in wolf pack fashion.
I grab my bag, and in the excitement I retrieve my cell phone from my bag so that I could call AAA to have them come unlock my open trunk to get car key out. Yes, the bag that was now sitting at my feet. I realize my stupidity just as the voice over my phone says, “Emergency assistance, how may I help you.”
“Oh nevermind” I reply, “I did the hokey pokey and got my bag back”.
“Sounds good, have a great day!” was the response, as though this phrase has been spoken a thousand times before.
As I began the drive back home, several thoughts floated around in my head. I needed a better plan to record where I park. I needed to stop putting my car key in my carryon bag. I needed to stop misspelling words like “reservoir”, “rhythm”, “condescension” or “hope”. I needed to set up a Go Fund Me account to help St Louis buy themselves a decent airport. And that reminded me that I needed to see a doctor the next morning and get a Z Pak after eating at the staph infection restaurant in Missouri. But for now, I need to get some rest. I have to get ready for my next adventure, and it was going to be a doozy!
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