So my mom's cat woke me up at 3 a.m. by walking back and forth across my chest. He's a very large cat and due to my Jewel Big Ds this is kind of...painful, but I put up with it because he does this charming little thing of putting his paw gently on your face to tell you he wants to be petted (NOTE TO MR. KRISTA: I won't find it charming if you do this). After a while I just gave up on going back to sleep since I had this 7:40 flight anyway, and since it's a "short one-hour flight", with the time change I'd be in my own bed again 9 a.m.
Got to the airport around 6:30 and had no problems getting through security other than the fact that people generally are morons, got to the gate and found the flight still showing as on time, with the plane sitting right at the gate waiting. Hey, this isn't so bad.
At 7:30 they announce that we haven't started boarding because there is a "small problem". The People Whose Sole Job is to Make Sure the Paperwork is Done Properly left off the second page of the paperwork. Hmmm, paperwork...well, at least it's not a mechanical issue; I'm sure they'll have this taken care of shortly. Oh, except as it turns out, they can't reach any of the People Whose Sole Job is to Make Sure the Paperwork is Done Properly because apparently the Union of People Whose Sole Job is to Make Sure the Paperwork is Done Properly has ensured that
they all get New Year's Day off.
As the lone gate agent is painstakingly getting everyone onto new flights, I see from my Delta app that I've already been rebooked to go through Atlanta. Three-hour layover in ATL doesn't sound fun but maybe I'll make it home in time for the late games.
When I arrived in ATL at 9:55, I checked the monitors and saw there was a 10:30 flight. I'm at Gate A34 and going to Gate D35. ATL is not a small airport, but this is it. My chance to show the producers of The Amazing Race what I'm made of. I decide to go for it.
I do my best OJ through the airport (the OJ who ran through airports, not the version who killed people) and make it to the gate to find that they've not yet begun boarding. Hallelujah! 2012, you're my BFF. So I stand in front of the gate agent waiting for her to finish a gibberish conversation with one of the maintenance guys. They were both speaking some version of English but couldn't understand each other nor could I make heads or tails of what was going on. Finally they stop debating whether the bopbeak is stuck in the jimjam or whatever, and I'm ready to victoriously claim a seat.
Except...the gate agent turned away from me and started boarding the itty-bittys and the cripples. She has to see me! I'm fat and wearing ***hsia! WTH! I patiently wait for a break in the action when some group doesn't realize they'll need to show any paperwork to get on the plane, and politely ask, "Could you tell me if there are any seats left on this flight?"
"
I'm boarding. I don't have time for you right now."
Well, OK then. I wait. Then she calls for the Diamond, Platinum, and Gold medallion members. "I'm Platinum!", I volunteer.
"
I'm boarding. I can't talk to you right now."
Me: Could you just tell me whether there are any seats left?
Her: Yes.
Me: OK, great, I'll wait.
Her: I don't have time. Why don't you check with that guy over there?
So I head to the gate from which people will be happily journeying to Montgomery, Alabama, and ask very slow of brain and foot gate agent there if he can help me. He's as confused as I as to what this has to do with him but offers to help. He finds me a seat and prints a boarding pass. Hallelujah! 2012, you're the bee's knees!
Then he asks me for my flight coupon. "My what?" "The boarding pass is showing that you need a flight coupon." I explain the various flight changes, but no dice. "You need to go to the ticket desk down at D21. You have six minutes before she closes the door for the flight."
D21 sounds close to D35. D21 is not close to D35.
Walter Payton my way down to D21 and find exactly what you'd expect at a customer service area: two agents, one of whom is on the phone and won't make eye contact and one of whom is helping an old man who appears never to have been in an airport before.
Waiting, waiting...finally the one on the phone hangs up. I explain my predicament. She types seemingly randomly at the computer and makes not one, not two, but three phone calls, two of which were to wrong numbers. At this point I have two minutes and she just tells me to go ahead back to the gate.
As I Rashaan Salaam back down the corridor (I'm tired) I can see the helpful dude waving to me and then waving to the gate agent to hold the flight. I make it there and magically they don't care any more about my lack of flight coupon. Hallelujah! 2012, I'm gonna have your baby!
The sky waitress tells me to take "any empty seat", and as I pass by an entire flight full of steely glares of people who think I'm the reason for their delay, I realize this is apparently airline code for "take
the empty seat, yes, that one, the one surrounded on all sides by parents holding happy shouty toddlers, except for Tanner-aged farts behind you whose life mission is to complain loudly about the happy shouty toddlers ("Hey, do you think we could use the aircraft safety card as earmuffs? Hahahaha!")".
I'm firmly committed to Team Happy Shouty in the ongoing war, that is until we reach whatever altitude it is that hurts their ears and turns all of them into surly screamers, which then lasts throughout the flight no matter how many obnoxiously loud toys, devices and other distractions their parents try to entice them with, including my hair.
Though sorely tempted to throw Statler and Waldorf and the whole lot of Small Surlies out the nearest exit (which may be behind me), I feared that if I did I'd get handcuffed to my seat, and I really needed to pee once the seatbelt light went off. Which of course never happened, because the flight was so turbulent that not even the sky waitress was allowed to get up and give us any damn peanuts.
So in summary, 2012 can go die in a fiery herpes bus crash.