Now, now, before you go thinking this is going to be some slushy tribute to the vocal calisthenics of Ben E. King, let me clarify by saying that this story, like most of the adventures I am involved in, begins in an airport.
Technically I suppose it begins on a rooftop in Brooklyn the previous night, where a group of starry-eyed international affairs majors engaged in a jubilant end-of-the-semester soiree complete with tealights, an impromptu trumpet solo and vino.
Knowing full well that I had an early morning flight to Detroit the next day, in honor of my little sister's college graduation, I kept the Rioja consumption to a minimum--no easy feat, especially when there's a book-swap-dance-a-thon involved--but succeeded, or so I thought as I huffed up my fourth floor walk-up at 2 am.
With my bag packed, alarm set and graduation card sealed (yea, Neesh!) I collapsed into bed, only to wake up five minutes before take-off. A myriad of emphatic four letter words swam through my murky brain and I was confronted with the image of my father, dejectedly shaking his head--after years of carefully constructed pre-travel checklists and religiously getting to the airport at least 80 minutes prior to departure is this what I had to show for myself? As I hauled ass to La Guardia, well aware of the fact that NW flight 542 was now en route--as a matter of fact, according to my calculations, somebody was probably getting snapped at for failing to put their damn tray table up--I tried to take comfort in the fact that for someone who had been flying since she was 40 days old, I had a decent track record : this was the first flight I had ever missed.
So what's protocol, I thought to myself, as I marched over to the Northwest counter, determined to get to Detroit on the next flight available. "Sorry," said Gregg, the agent whom I would get to know super well throughout the course of the day. "It's graduation weekend honey, everyone's going to Detroit. You're on stand by."
I parked myself at Gate #9, eliciting a combination of sympathetic smiles and suspicious glances from gate agents, passengers and airport janitors. "Well, well, well. If it isn't 'Terminal: The Sequel," they must have thought to themselves. I drank overpriced coffee. I made whiny phone calls. I began to wish they would get rid of the "no deodorant on board" rule. I struck up conversation with strangers and tried bartering my dog-eared copy of People magazine for their confirmed seats. No dice.
And then, at approximately 6 pm, exactly 9 hours after my scheduled departure time, (at this point Gregg had offered me a job at the terminal), I was graced with the magic words. "Havier, A-yar-ty?" crackled the gate agent. There's nothing like hearing your--severely butchered--name over the microphone , especially after you've spent an entire day watching really bad CNN, crumpled up on a plastic bench that has stripped your butt of all feeling. As I leapt towards the boarding door, I passed by an applauding Gregg. "You're out of here, finally!" he exclaimed. And that I was.
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