Technorati Tags: Humor, bathrobe, Buck, Life, El Paso, motorcycle, fear of flying, Boston, Cape Cod, Chihuahuas, crying
El Paso
100-degrees on the patio
I wanted to go home to Boston and see our family and friends, and I wanted to be on the Cape for a least a few fall days. We’re actually from the Massachusetts peninsula of Cape Cod, and I miss what the board of tourism has spent millions re-naming “The Shoulder Season.” It’s the only time you can get a parking space at the beach, or the mall, or any place. The campaigns to get people to the Cape during the summer have been successful; The Shoulder Season campaign, not so much. For me, that’s a good thing.
Buck is in charge of making all plane reservations, because he flies so often for the magazine and is totally plugged-in to the cheap fares. So I told him I want to go home for a visit, and the next thing I know I get an automatic-response email from the airline that says:
Good News! Your Flight Is Confirmed For 9/11
As I was careening down the hall to Buck’s office, I tripped over a Chihuahua sleeping in the doorway and fell, landing hard on one knee and I started crying. (There’s nothing unusual about this, I trip over dogs all the time and it always makes me mad enough to cry.)
“What the hell are you doing?” Buck wanted to know, but not bad enough to look up from his keyboard.
“I don’t want to fly on 9/11,” I said from the floor.
“That’s the cheapest day by like $375. And I was even able to book it mid-morning, so you don’t have to be at the airport at fucking dawn — “
“But it’s 9/11 –
“Yeah? What’s that, oh yeah, is that the day Sunny In Philadelphia comes back on TV? I can’t believe you’re crying about a TV show — they’ve got cable TV in Boston you know .”
“I’m crying about the fucking dog, but I’m talking about 9/11. You booked me to fly on 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 –”
He looked up from his keyboard and had the same look on his face as Jimmy, our German Shepherd, when you’d ask him, “Who’s the handsomest young dog in the world?”
So I looked into his Jimmy-face and said, “Jesus, Buck! That’s the day we were attacked by suicide bombers! They used planes to -”
“Oh, geeze. Wow. WOW. When I saw how cheap the flight was, I just jumped on it. The date didn’t ring any bells at the time. But you know what? I bet it’ll be a great day to fly. I bet there’ll be hardly anyone else on the plane, and you’ll be able to stretch out across the seats and sleep –”
“I’ll be napping in a pit with vipers, I’ll be sleeping with members of a sleeper cell –”
“No way. It’ll be a good day to fly.”
A good day to fly. This time bells did go off, but they were in my head. I was five-years-old standing in a terminal at Logan Airport with my parents, and we were saying goodbye to my grandmother. She was flying TWA home to New Jersey, and she was nervous about the weather. My father gave my Mimi a hug and said, “Nonsense, Gladys, this is a good day to fly.” Her jet collided in mid-air with an Eastern Airlines jet over Danbury, Connecticut. This happened during pre-Internet days of course, even CNN was decades away, and we didn’t get the message until the middle of the night. I woke up in my bed to the sound of screaming and people running up and down the staircase, my mother was wailing (it was her mother) and people kept saying, “It’s flight 853! It’s flight 853!”
My grandmother did survive. She broke her arm when she fell out of the sky and landed in a field. Her mink coat cushioned her fall. But she never flew after that. I think TWA credited her on the plane fare, and kicked in another $200.
I’m not afraid to fly. As a matter of fact, I’m so comfortable flying that I find it boring and I hate it for that reason alone. I hate the tediousness of it, the confines of the middle seat — which I inevitably get stuck with — and I hate the flight attendants, whom I consider to be the Catholic nuns of the sky. But I don’t like thumbing my nose at terrorists, and I’ve already had too close a call with post-9/11 bullshit.
In 2003, Buck had Max on a plane leaving Boston the same day the Shoe Bomber was leaving Boston. I know Buck, of course, didn’t know the Shoe Bomber even existed at the time he made the reservation for our beloved kid, but the thing is I was watching TV when the Shoe Bomber news came on and I was then put in the position of calling Logan Airport and screaming at some operator that MY 17-YEAR-OLD SON IS ON A FLIGHT OUT OF BOSTON TODAY. She had no information for me despite the fact I told her I’M A REPORTER FOR A POPULAR NEW ENGLAND FISHING MAGAZINE, GODDAMMIT! PUT YOUR SUPERVISOR ON THE PHONE! But I couldn’t get anywhere with those people. And Buck kept saying, “He’s fine. He’s sixteen,” as if his age would keep him safe. And even though he was actually seventeen, in my head he was seven. This was the mental picture I had in my head:
Then Buck adds, “Besides, he can take care of himself. He’s tough. Nobody would mess with him. He can be dangerous to mess with if he has to be.”
Okay. Now the mental picture switches to his dangerous look:
And then I just burst into tears, crying and railing. “This is bullshit. I hate being a parent. I HATE IT! I had no idea this shit was going to be so taxing, that it would suck THIS BAD! Being a mother is sucking the life outta me. It hurts my fucking brain. It’s killing me, man, IT’S KILLIN’ ME! What the fuck? Why did I do this to myself? My God, why did I have kids? WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?! The world bites and I’m so sick of this shit I can’t even tell you — If anything happens to that boy, I will get a machine gun and I will climb a tower and — “
And then Max called from Texas and I had to tell him about the Shoe Bomber and all he said was, “Ma, that is some crazy shit. I gotta go –”
And that was that. I clicked over to a Seinfeld re-run and life went on. And now I’m flying on 9/11 and I want everyone to pray to the Virgin de Guadalupe for me. And if anything should happen, I’m going on the record here and now to say that I better have had an awesome seat on that plane and been totally asleep at the time, and the fucking airline better be ready to cough up more than $200 for my kids.
If anyone’s interested, here’s some info on Flight 853, my grandmother’s plane.
Do your kids know you are posting their pics as colorful illustration for our amusement?
They’re my photos and I can do as I like with them, no matter what they say.
OH my gosh– you’re hysterically funny.
And I love your blog! I think I’ll blog roll you, whatever that means. I’ll figure it out. But I also love your fabulous picture of Theda Bara. I have Theda on a clock, believe or not. There are a lot of Theda freaks on eBay, and they apparently make clocks.
Thanks so much! I didn’t know that about Theda— I love her (as you can see), so I’ll have to look for one of those clocks. I’ve blog rolled you too– it must be called a blog roll because I was rolling with laughter while reading yours! By the way, I have a vampire picture of my son at about that same age. I’ll have to dig it up and e-mail it to you. What scary guys they were!
mim survived the plane crash? I though that was how she died
No, she only got sucked out of a big hole in the side of the plane. She and bunch of other people. Her big fur coat cushioned her fall, kinda like if she’d been wrapped in bubble wrap. Which is why I have mixed feelings about wearing fur. I’m against it, but I can’t deny it saved my grandmother’s life. But she died a year later, although I don’t think it had to do with the plane crash. Maybe it did. I’m sure the plane crash didn’t help.