The Sixth Sign
The signs were all around me; the Fates were fed up. Unfortunately, I never notice these things until I’m either smack in the middle of, or recovering from, a Cursed Event.
Sign Number One: It was 6:00am, I was on my way to Los Angeles for a much-needed vacation, and I wasn't coffeed up. That’s always a mistake; it makes the world hate me.
Checking in night before, I’d printed out my boarding passes specifically so the system would know my bags were coming. That's really the only way you can ensure they'll lose them properly.
Sign Number Two: I’d followed the rules, checking my bags with 45 minutes to spare. The attendant directed me to gate A5, handed me my claim check for the bags, and I made a beeline toward security.
The feeder line was wrapped around no less than a dozen bends, and the TSA people looked annoyed to be awake. Sleepy, crabby TSA people indicate that not only are the gods mad at you, but so is the Federal government. And the Feds are way more scary.
Despite being patted down and scanned twice with a wand, the guy in front of me kept setting off the alarm; apparently, he was related to Wolverine. This cost me another five minutes. Then I had to run my bags through twice for no particularly obvious reason. Five more minutes. Luckily, they didn't take me in the back room for a routine violation like they did to a friend of mine once, at Kennedy.
Sign Number Three: I got through security and did the OJ run to gate A5, as instructed. Gate A5 was going to Philly. I was going to Los Angeles LAX. I and my two exceedingly unwieldy (and heavy) bags were then directed to a different gate, on the other end of the concourse.
Thanks to Tae Kwan Do night before, I needed to work my stiff legs and arms anyway, so the run actually served the purpose of efficiently providing exercise. Doing things efficiently is another bad omen—it means the universe will balance it out with some kind of needless churn.
With 11 minutes to departure, I tried to run, lurching with the momentum of my carry on bags: an enormous laptop-backpack filled every gadget known to Man, and a duffle bag containing random clothes and an extra pair of shoes for when the airline lost my luggage (I'd thought ahead this time). Luckily for me, my calf muscles cramped up, hobbling me.
When I got to the gate, there was one person still waiting to board. Good thing I was there 45 minutes early so I could board the plane last!
Sign Number Four was sporting a pair of shiny, black Ropers, shorts that could double as butt-floss, and enough silicone to pay Dow’s legal fees for a decade, the woman in front of me was a perfect hybrid of Daisy Duke and Joey from Friends’ LA manager. She blocked the aisle of the plane because she was unable to properly to match her boarding pass seat number with the numbers on the aisle. Maybe the different fonts threw her?
Eventually, a nice flight attendant came along to do Daisy’s thinking for her and found her seat for her. Daisy stepped into the row, ass in front of her seat, planetoid-sized “breasts” jutting over the poor guy assigned next to her, and stared vacantly into space. Daisy’s pink, glittery bag sat in the aisle, untouched; she stared expectantly at the flight attendant, who stared back. This left me stuck in the aisle, bags digging ravines into my shoulders and I waited nearly five minutes for the staring contest to end.
That's when my alter-ego took over. Deftly twisting my hips and shrugging my right shoulder, I kicked her big, pink bag out of my way and glared at her. I'm not sure if it was because I'd subconsciously used my duffle bags as a secret weapon or if it was the pair of freakishly large, blimp-like objects embedded in her chest that did her in, but with a tiny gasp, Daisy Duke toppled over.
Arms akimbo, and nearly bludgeoning the guy cowering beneath her torsal protrusions, she stared frantically at the flight attendant. I think Daisy expected her to arrest me and take me to the back room for a violation. Somewhere, someone snickered, lifting my mood a bit. Glaring at Daisy one last time for good measure, I stalked off toward my seat at the back of the plane.
I had a back row all to myself where, for the next 2 hours, I watched as three strange men several rows in front of me took turns hanging over each other to gape out the window. Despite it being only 7:15am, one of them was drunk and sweaty. (It's always 5:00 somewhere!) Eventually, they passed out.
From that point, everything was great. Until about 20 minutes after everyone ate. (Thankfully, they'd already run out of food by the time they got to me.) It wasn’t the line of people waiting to use the toilet that bothered me; it was their emissions that made the experience unpleasant. And all of those methane producers kept trying to talk to me, as if the talk-to-me-and-die look on my face wasn't enough indication to leave me alone. Yup. This was Sign Number Five.
As a last desperate attempt to keep the never ending line of farting people from trying to talk to me, I slipped my Level 2 Happy Bunny shirt ("Your anger makes me happy”) on over the one I was wearing.
Note to self: farts on a plane last much longer than you'd expect.
We arrived at LAX pretty much on time (Sign Number Six), and I went straight to baggage claim. Apparently, despite the fact that I (and my luggage) were all checked in together, at the same time, one of my bags had taken a later flight. While waiting an hour and a half at the airline's business office for it to arrive, I examined the bag that made it with me. It wasn’t on a different continent; something had to be wrong!
Sure enough, my name was misspelled.
The universe spent the next two weeks getting even.