On December 11th, 2000, at 7:35 am (ironically the exact time I was rushed into the world in a St. Paul hospital 21 years ago), I hurried into Chicago's O'Hare airport in great fear of missing my 7:45 flight home. A developing snowstorm had impeded progress in my roommate Seann's car, a 24-foot boat that has even less tire traction than it does heating. I even loaned Seann my gloves so he could feel his hands on the wheel, and of course forgot to get them back when we got out of the car.
But the weather had more in store than treacherous roads and a means to a white Christmas. Hustling to my gate, I was greeted with a departure time estimation that was fleeing just as fast. 8:00, the board announced. Then 8:30. 9:00. 9:30. Then the board went off. Then on again, bringing the words no airline passenger wants to see: Flight Cancelled. Apparently the plane (along with 90% of O'Hare's other planes, as I would later discover) was stuck fast in the accumulating snow, and needed to be towed in order to even move anywhere, to say nothing of taking off. My suggestion of having a ground vehicle tow the plane fast enough down the runway that it could lift off was not taken seriously, and we were officially screwed.
Thus began the rest of my birthday, and a solid chunk of the next day, stranded in an airport. The events of the next 24 hours are many and boring, but all share a theme of rejection and despair, and all involve my not leaving O'Hare except to catch the Tram to other just as disappointing terminals. The highlights include how I narrowly missed Seann when he returned to the airport another time to drop off our friend Gabe. I'd expected him to stop near the US Airways departure area, where I was waiting just inside out of the cold, eyes peeled for any mammoth-sized gray Buicks that may pass. And pass he did, though minus the passenger drop I had counted on him making. Realizing he was not going to stop, I made it out to the curb fast enough for him to still see me, had it not been for an ill-fated bus that somehow managed to drive exactly between me and Seann, cutting off all sight lines. I ran after the car, jumping in front of the bus so that it had to stop, but the Gray Dragon was too far down the road for me to leave my bags behind and chase down. The timing of the bus was truly miraculous, however, leading me in one more way to think I was fated to have this experience. There was no way it could have timed itself any better to completely eliminate any chance of my catching a ride home. It was like that train in Sliding Doors. Anybody seen that movie? Nevermind. Other highlights include getting up from a 6 hour nap on a bench only to find that my second flight of the day was also cancelled and that I couldn't go home for at least another 14 hours. Oh, wait, I guess that's not really a highlight.
So I celebrated my 21st birthday, a major rite of passage in our American (a.k.a. alcohol-focused) culture, by myself having a margarita at the bar in Chile's Too! It was a pretty garbage margarita, but it was alcohol purchased by me, following only moderate laughing and passing around of my chewed-up, masking-taped ID. I'd given up delivering my sob story to different airlines in hopes of scrounging my way into the luggage compartment of a charter going out that evening - I covered three hours and four terminals finding out that exactly 100% of flights to Minnesota were cancelled. After crowning my big day with a lonely drink at the bar, I decided to give up on this birthday and go to sleep in my bed at the four-star hotel otherwise known as Terminal 5 baggage claim.
I awoke in the morning to a fresh sky and a fresh day. Departure monitors were proclaiming "On time!" across the board, and my gate agent insisted that yes, despite the odds, our plane was actually going to take off at some point. Once boarding began, I made a quick jump to the phone to inform my parents that I was coming home. And I did. Only 45 minutes (plus one day) late.
As one might imagine, much questioning of life took place during this 26-hour debacle. Being a film student (a.k.a. someone who over-analyzes everything and won't shut up during movies), it occurred to me that perhaps this birthday was something of a metaphor for my life as a whole. After all, what better time to have a life-changing revelation than on my 21st birthday, such a landmark day in any young man's life. In Native American traditions, the soon-to-be-man is sent out into the wilderness to fast for several days until he sees a hallucination of his spiritual guide to show him the way through life. Of course, Native Americans observe this ritual at an earlier age, and they typically see images of owls and coyotes as opposed to homeless people and Mexican janitorial staff, but the parallel is there.
I imagined the day as being divided up into four quarters, much like the four quarters of life: growing up, working, working more, and retirement. The first part of my day was spent preparing for my journey - packing my things, checking flight information, deciding what would be the best medium by which to reach my destination (in this case Seann's Sketch-mobile), and watching lots and lots of music videos and retarded TV shows since we had decided to stay up all night instead of getting up early. Much like childhood. Hmm. The second part of my day was spent discovering that things are a lot harder than you had anticipated. You think you're just going to go out into the real world (a.k.a. airport) and take right off, but you're wrong. Things go astray, people don't help you, and no matter how hard you try, you really can't get anywhere. So you might as well just go to sleep. Which leads me to the third phase of life, mindless acceptance. This was the part of the day where I fell asleep for six hours, just living life as passively and lazily as possible. And wouldn't you know it? When I woke up, I was just as far along as I would have been otherwise, and much better rested. At last, the fourth stage. Normally, one is supposed to be able to quit working once their life is three-fourths over, but we all know this isn't true, so I began stage four by finding out that I actually wasn't going to get my reward of going home, followed by three hours of scrambling around trying to find a way that I could. No amount of begging and pleading could convince anybody to help me out, and finally I just resigned myself to trying to enjoy the last of my birthday and thinking about what it all means. Eventually I got so gosh-darn tired that I had to return to Terminal (get it? Terminal?) 5, where I started in the first place, and laid down for a long, long sleep. I didn't even make it until midnight.
So the apparent allegory is one of hopelessness, meaninglessness and despair. Not the happiest thing to think about on your 21st birthday, when you're supposed to hiding from meaning and responsibility behind unhealthy quantities of booze. But a message that is nonetheless hard to ignore, and valuable to learn from. Or else I'm just full of crap.
And yet, I can't help at learning at least something from the whole dreaded experience. I know, this always happens - it's a problem I need to work on if I ever intend to become truly miserable. But in all these trails and tribulations there just seemed to be a couple little nuggets wisdom that poked their heads out, and just made sense. Call them tips for surviving airports. Or whatever.
- Trust those who've spend more time here than you have. My dad has spent a lot more hours in airports than I, so when he says it's time to schmooze the ticket counter folks, there's probably some purpose to it.
- Carrying heavy baggage around is pointless. Store it, get rid of it, or at least find a way to make some use out of it. Even dirty laundry can make a good pillow.
- After a while, in certain situations, rules stop applying. If you're angry enough, you don't have to wait in lines or present a boarding pass. Also the places they put benches in terminal hallways only "suggested" locatiohns. If you decide that a bench would be better if you moved it over by an outlet so you can plug in your alarm clock, nobody's going to mess with you as long as you look like you know what you're doing. Also, rules only apply in the first place to those not clever enough to figure out a way around them. Unfortunately, luck and wit were not on my side, and even my fastest of fast-talking were not enough to make cancelled flights fly again.
- Everyone has to sleep on a bench sometimes. Might as well get comfy.
- Just when you think things can't get any worse, they inevitably do (some guy named Murphy may have already thought of this one). Airport transit trains love to shut down precisely when all you want to do is go to your nice comfy bench in terminal 5 and go to sleep. You can either get pissed, yell obscenities and punch signs, or you can chalk it up to fate, hand over five bucks and have a good conversation with the cute French girl you share a cab with. I did both.
All in all, the day was pretty well ruined, at least compared to my plans of arriving home, getting my new license and going out to the downtown bars and getting sloppy drunk with my friends. It was a wasted birthday - but not the right kind of watsted. Yet, as with all mistakes, chosen or not, things can be rectified somewhat if you can only learn something from them. Hopefully I did. Or maybe I knew all this stuff already. But I did succeed in getting at least 14 hours of sleep on various O'Hare benches that were not all that less comfy than the rock-hard futon I usually sleep on. And the bartenders at Chili's in Terminal 2 make good conversation. I probably just would have gotten real sick anyway. Oh, and Verde still has my gloves.
