It's Me, Sara Louise

The moment when I found out that I was not going to get on the flight to Paris and be able to meet up with Gregory, I seriously almost crumbled. I remember standing at the desk and the gate agent telling me that there was no way it was going to happen, and I had to steady myself because I actually swayed. It was not good.

Traveling standby means that you don’t get on lots of flights, and I’m used to that, but this time it felt different, worse, way worse. It had already been twelve hours since I had left my house, and after miraculously managing to get on the tight flight out of San Antonio, only to have a wide open flight to Paris suddenly become overbooked was too much of a roller coaster, especially when I knew that at that second, Gregory was somewhere in the sky between Houston and Paris, content and comfortable in the knowledge that I’d be meeting him at the TGV station at Charles De Gaulle in a few hours. But I knew that I wouldn’t be there, and that sucked. And do you know what else sucked? The next flight to Paris was forty-eight hours away.

Well, if I couldn’t get to Paris, I needed to get home, but that’s when I looked at the time and realized that the last flight back to San Antonio was departing and I had to kiss my ride back home goodbye.

Fortunately, a good friend of my mother’s (one of the golden girls that came to visit Le Petit Village a ways back) has a daughter that lives only fifteen minutes from Dulles and all I had to do was call her and she’d come and rescue me. How awesome is that? I was far too emotional to spend the night by myself moping in an airport hotel, so a rescue from a family friend was exactly what the doctor ordered. I gave her a ring and she told me she’d be outside baggage claim in fifteen. Whew! My day was looking up, but first I had to make my way through Dulles.

If you’ve ever been to Dulles Airport, then you know that they use these bizarre, people-mover buses to transport you from the gate to the arrivals hall. They look like something out of Star Wars, they’re these large rectangle things that pull right up to the building, and attach to it, so you walk through a door, directly onto a bus. They’re weird yokes. Anyway, I walked up to the ‘people-mover area’ and saw that there were three separate lines of people formed, outside of three separate doors.

Not knowing which door the next people-mover would come up to, people just kind of picked one and waited. I chose the middle line, it looked pretty good to me. Besides, the line to my right was in the process of boarding a people-mover and it was obvious that some of those waiting in line, weren’t going to fit and would have to wait for their door’s next go-around.

Now, do you think these people decided to be polite and wait there turn? No, no they didn’t. As soon as they figured out that they were going to have to wait some more, but spotted a people-mover pulling up to my door, they started to try to budge their way into my line. And that’s when I snapped.

OH HELL NO, I was not having it! I was having a bad day, and I wasn’t going to let pushy people be rude and push over me. And that’s when I said au revoir to any sense of decorum and ladylike behavior.

“EXCUSE ME! THIS IS NOT YOUR LINE, YOU CHOSE YOUR LINE, SO YOU NEED STAY IN IT!”

(It’s possible some head shaking and finger pointing accompanied this.)

I got quite a few looks but let me tell you, I did not care. I was frustrated and those pushy people seemed like the perfect way for me to vent some of my frustrations. They did there best to ignore the mentally unhinged lady that was yelling at them, and continued to push, so I kicked it up a notch.

“HELLO! WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE STILL PUSHING?! THAT’S YOUR LINE OVER THERE!”

They pushed some more.

“DOES NOBODY CARE THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE CUTTING?! NOBODY?! NO?! OK, JUST ME THEN!”

I gave up. We boarded the people-mover but I let my elbows jab like they had never jabbed before, and I spent the ride shooting out as many bad and disapproving looks that I could muster while the rest of the people on board did their best to avoid eye contact with the crazy, people-mover, line lady. It wasn’t my finest hour, but for the record, I really don’t like cutters.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in the continuing saga of my road to nowhere. [SPOILER ALERT: I did make it to Paris eventually, and I pinky-swear to tell you all about it.]