Vivify

Holy horses!! Really?!?

So after an egregious stint of months in which I’ve been languishing in the gnarled stalactites of my own brain, I’ve emerged with no happiness or sense of humor whatsoever. It’s taken me a while to remember that I started this silly blog as a form of mental laxative, and to remember that my life has darling and delightful things in it in spite of all the not. And with that, I’m going to write about the day I came home from DC, 9 months ago now. I remember exactly nothing about it so pretty much I’m gonna be spinning a yarn round a campfire about aliens and ghosts and abandoned railways.

Kahlua! Of course.:) Elaina and I spent our final evening puppy-sitting for her friend’s dog Kahlua, who leapt about trying to eat air and the rug and most of Elaina’s face. We realized after several minutes that she might be hungry. I think we fed her pizza and were staring at her to make sure she wouldn’t die. I started repacking up all of my stuff, which had eerily tripled in size and items over the course of the 3 days. I performed immensely difficult feats of stretching and shoving and yelling but it just wasn’t all going to fit. The unfitting culprits were my 14 new sweatshirts and Kahlua. She was very interested in my suitcase as a house/snack/mate. Elaina started executing an intricate dance to distract her and I kept stomping on all of my stuff to try to make it fit. No love. Elaina suggested using some of those Vac-You-Suck bags, and they worked great as far as making everything flatter. But they also made everything wider. I must have blacked out at one point because somehow my zipper closed all the way and nothing exploded.

We got about 16 minutes of sleep, during which I didn’t sleep but stared and thought about bugs and bagels. I was sure Elaina was glad to see me go, so I woke her up and we dragged ourselves out to the car at 3am or whatever absurd hour it was. She dropped me off at the airport where I was promptly stopped by security and frog-marched into this tall clear cylinder. Like the one in A Wrinkle In Time…. I was too annoyed to be nervous that I’d suddenly go blind and be stuck behind The Black Thing, but this tube wasn’t even air pressurized or sound proofed. They did a full scan of my pajamas and scowl, and then pronounced that I wasn’t a knife-wielding threat of eastern descent, and the fact that I didn’t have my drivers’ license on me must just be one of those unlucky things that happens to nice girls from California. They let me out of the tube and I hauled all of my stuff onto the table to be scanned some more, placing everything in their little tubs, when some brisk businessman knocked everyone out of the way, grabbed his own tub, and shoved it ahead of mine in the scanning line. I stared at the back of his head, which didn’t show the slightest sign of remorse, and then made several impatient and growling sounds as I stepped up 3 inches from his back to make him as uncomfortable as possible. Clearly he thought I was going to take a while and he would breeze right through, but his tub was filled with an assortment of laptops and walkmans and lightsabers and a-bomb casings, which meant he took twice as long as I would have. I was not with the happy. I shouted things about rudeness and never having learned the crucial “no cutting in line” lesson in 2nd grade at the security guards but it was still 4am and they were thinking of pillows and warm socks. Finally we all made it through and I was pleased to note that he wasn’t on the same plane as me.

However… next to me on my 2nd pencil plane of the trip was his twin. The two princes of the Rules Don’t Apply To Me 3rd dynasty, Corporal CutsInLine and Passenger Problem. Passe, as we’ll call him for short, was deeply immersed in his laptops and walkmans (walkmen?) and lightsabers and a-bomb casings that he’d picked up from his twin on the way to the plane, and couldn’t be bothered to turn all these items off, or stop slicing the seat in front of him to bits and then blowing up the passengers, as the item may be. The flight attendant wobbled by to ask him 3 times to turn everything off so the plane could take off, and his response was somewhere in the eloquent region of “ya ya huff.” Finally when everyone started shooting him the evil eye because of the plane getting turned off by the pilot to show this man how to do it, he complied. For several seconds. Once we were taxiing down the runway he mystically produced a SECOND set of laptop/walkmen/saber/bombs and began juggling all of them around as well. The flight attendant was appalled on her next trip past us and asked him if he remembered that she’d just instructed him to turn all of those gadgets off. He replied “No, you told me to turn THOSE gadgets off. *points to other pile of gadgets* You’ve said nothing to me about THESE gadgets at all.” I wanted to hit him, except I had zero lightsabers and he had two, and his logic reminded me of too many people I know.

We made it through the flight without any more of the bombs exploding, although he did sneak several more peeks at his crappy old Nokia phone which I snickered at, and when the flight attendant noticed she put her foot down so hard it nearly cracked the pencil. I was very glad to get away from both him and the plane, and I can’t remember where the layover between flights was but I made it onto the second leg of my trip. The 2nd plane was normal sized, however it was filled with everyone. Ever. People who hadn’t been born yet and people who’d died years before were crammed onto this plane. Whether it was the hour of the day or the sobriety brought on by all the dead people, it was one of the quietest planes I’d ever been on. Until squirming past me came….Captain Cough. Of all the passengers I could have sat by who were dead and utterly silent, I get the one who’s just mildly unhealthy and loud about it. Every 10 seconds he would cough, even after sipping water, even after eating a box of cough drops, even after falling asleep. And none of the demure gentle coughing you might find at a New England tea in the 20’s, nono this was “RRAAAFFFHHHGGGGGKAAAAPPHTTTTTTHHHHHH!!” …….. “CCCHHHHOOROOOOORRRRRKKKKKKKFNNNAAAAALLLLLGHHH!!!!” …….. “ECCCCCKKKKKKKKKTHHHHHPPPPOOOOOFFFFFFFFSNFMLUUUUUUUURRRRTSSSS!!!” And each time with no hanky or even a hand over his mouth, his head seemed to be turned directly at me, like he was undergoing some awkward invisible examination or something. I really wondered if I was going mad for a while because even after staring at him for half an hour, and then staring around at everyone else to see if they were staring at him too, no one else seemed to be disturbed. No one else even seemed to hear him! Had I accidentally stumbled and flopped onto an airborne version of “Our Town”?!? I wanted to ask the couple across from our row if they could hear him, but they were intertwined in the same airplane seat with their lips wrapped around each others’ skulls in a very Italian way. No one else would catch my eye either, so cleared my throat and made a very loud snorting sound into the void….at which everyone within 6 rows leapt a mile out of their seats like I’d shrieked “FIRE!” or “SPIDER!” or something. Everyone, even the Italians, made it their business to spend the remainder of the flight staring at me, Weird Girl Who Snorted, which was not helped by my horse laughter or hysterical pointing at Captain Cough, who hadn’t noticed a thing.

Everyone, even the Italians, let me get off the plane first. I shoved and kicked my way to baggage claim, where I stood by myself while my fellow passengers gave me a wide berth and huddled on the other side of the turnstile. Apparently the baggage handlers gave names, stories and new hairstyles to every piece of luggage on the plane because we all stood there avoiding anymore snorting sounds for nearly an hour. During which I saw my mother’s car drive past 6 times, but being obstinately cel phone-less as she was I couldn’t call and tell her to be patient. After I finally collected my newly named Lindara the astronaut’s daughter with the blond bob suitcase from the turnstile, I waited outside and watched the Italians reunite with all 65 gathered family members whose greetings consisted of shouting and blowing cigarette smoke at each other. Mum eventually found me and squealed happily, she bought me food and we drove back to my house where I was surprised to find that my rental company had cleaned my rugs. And then I slept.

So, beginning April 15th of this year I’ll be going on another birthday trip, this one lasting 11 days and including 3 days in London, 3 in Paris and 3 in Italy…with Italians… Imminent shenanigans much? How many years d’you reckon it’ll take me to tell that story?

Chant Down Babylon