It's Me, Sara Louise

Let’s see… where did we leave off? Oh yes, Gregory had dialled my number at noon as instructed, but my phone had gone straight to voicemail. It had gone straight to voicemail because I had turned it off! Somehow by the skin of my teeth I had managed to get on that flight….

As the passengers boarded, I sat there right in front of the desk, watching as people who had been on the cancelled flight, got their new boarding cards. I was positive I’d be heading out of the airport in a car, not on an airplane. And then, as the last passengers went through the gate, the agent looked at me and asked, “Are you Sara?” and handed me a boarding card.

What in the what?! I was on!

Shock and excitement are the only words to describe how I was feeling. I was on my way to Dulles Airport and would make my connection to a flight to Paris that as of the last time I had checked, had about twenty empty seats. I was in like Flynn.

When we landed in Dulles, I switched on my phone and checked my voicemail, there was a message from Gregory… “Yay Skippy! See you tomorrow in Paris!“

Smiling, I made my way to my connecting gate. The flight was due to start boarding any minute. There was a cackling noise followed by a voice over the loudspeaker… there was something wrong with our plane, but they had found another aircraft to replace ours.

I could feel nervousness bubbling up inside of me but I convinced myself all would be OK. After all, there were like twenty empty seats, what could possibly go wrong?

What could go wrong is this… the new aircraft could be smaller than the original one, like thirty seats smaller, so it would be not only full, but ten paying passengers would be booted off of it! AARRGGHH!

It was sheer pandemonium. The poor gate agents were scrambling to reassign seat numbers while passenger after passenger stood in line to ask if there seat was OK. Yes it’s OK! As instructed over the loudspeaker, if there was a problem with your seat assignment, your name would be called! AARRGGHH!

At one point a man came over and asked me why everyone was standing in line, I said that there wasn’t any need for them to be in line, but I guess some people just like to stand in line. He laughed and then went and stood in the line! #truestory AARRGGHH! 

It was pure chaos and unfortunately, due to everyone on the airplane feeling the need to stand in line and ask a question, the flight was delayed, the agents were on the verge of a breakdown, and by the time I found out that there wasn’t a hope in you know where that I was going to get on it, the one flight back to San Antonio that I could get on, had left.

So there I was, stuck in D.C., with the next flight to Paris being forty-eight hours away.

Still to come… my rescue, a return to Texas, another stab at Paris, and one big ol’ gigantic scene caused by yours truly.