Oh, man, I’m tired. I just got out of a two-hour bath and am planning to get into bed as soon as I finish updating the internet about what I’ve been up to for the last five days. Also I have to get my laundry out of the dryer.
And actually maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you about my excellent weekend with My Friend Amy…the first and best beloved of all the fantastic Amys in my life. I was with her in Boone, North Carolina for Easter in her newly built energy-efficient palatial estate on the side of a mountain and although I made it out of there without picking up a North Carolina accent (barely) I didn’t succeed in not kicking myself for letting so much time go by between this past weekend and the last time I saw her, four years ago in July.
But that can wait until I’ve slept for twelve or so hours. I don’t know when my rockstar lifstyle began to wear on me, Behind The Music style, and how just a couple of weekends of not getting my regular eight hours and five servings of vegetables a day can just sort of wreck me. I was supposed to get home last night at eight so I could be in at work this morning, as I usually am on a Tuesday, when of course this morning at eight (Pacific time) I was on a six hour plane ride from DC, which is all fine and good but not really what I wanted to be doing at that particular moment. I went straight to work from the airport and conducted some of the least effective therapy ever conducted by a not-very-effective therapist in the history of sub-optimally-effective therapy, I’m sure. This was me on the phone with a patient: “HUH? WHAT? Oh, right. Uh huh. Wait, what was that you just said? Sure, yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Mm hmm. Okay, bye.” Yeah, awesome. I’m tired.
It’s not a big deal, but basically I missed the last flight to Seattle out of DC last night because the teeny tiny weetsy beetsy little commuter puddle-jumper plane I was on…you know the kind, the kind where you can’t totally stand up in the aisle and whether or not there’s actually a bathroom on board becomes a subject of intense personal consideration…that little plane had to make an unscheduled landing to get more fuel. You see, the plane…and I didn’t even know planes could do this!..ran out of gas.
Now, normally your friend Chiara is a peaceable sort. I’m trained in conflict mediation and usually I adhere firmly to the precepts of non-violence and compromise. I have been known to smile sweetly at recently-released convicts while waiting in line at the DMV, to whistle a happy tune in southbound traffic on the 5 freeway at 5:30 on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, to personally thank my gynecologist and wish her a lovely day directly after having had my intimate area menaced with a device closely resembling a pair of salad tongs. I am, in short, not easily riled up for the most part.
And this juncture is where I must introduce Lurleen, as Pineapple might have called her… for such I can only imagine was her name. One row behind me, one seat over. Turning forty in a month (I know this because she screamed this information at one of her be-mulleted offspring), with a blurry Daffy Duck tattoo visible on her forearm. Big white sneakers and limp red hair, with a voice that suggested deep familiarity for that which was unfiltered and cold-brewed. Lurleen was on her first plane trip, visiting her brother in St. Louis. Lurleen’s three sons cowered around her seat, occasionally essaying remarks concerning the vast height attained by the puddle-jumper or the possibility of alien life-forms approaching the plane at any given moment, all of which were met by a scream to shut up already. Lurleen, Lurleen. She haunts me still.
I paid Lurleen no mind for the first part of the trip. I had a big thick book about the history of salt and my iPod and I figured that I’d still make my connecting flight even if we did have to circle once or twice. It was going into hour two, at the pilot’s announcement that we’d be heading to Virginia to fuel up, that things began to go bad for Lurleen, and hence, for me. The plane did this thing where it would start descending for its landing and then all of a sudden have to veer up again for some reason I was never quite clear about. Lurleen, seriously, lost it. She began backhanding her nearest kid and telling him to shut up already and screaming that she could fly this damn thing better than the pilot. The weirdest part was that no one else reacted to her or even seemed to hear her but me…with the exception of the guy sitting directly in front of her, who did nothing more than shoot me an aggrieved glance or two. When we finally did land (and weren’t allowed off the plane) she called someone on her cell and began weeping snuffily, crying that no one would come pick her up at the airport at two in the morning and she didn’t know what she was going to do and that it was fine for some people but that she’d never flown before and that she needed a cigarette and she wasn’t getting a cigarette and it was about this time that I noticed my iPod battery was low. I began doing this dangerous little dance with the iPod…I’d listen to a song, turn it off and see if she was still yelling (she was), turn it back on, watch the battery indicator get lower, turn the volume up, try unsuccessfully to read my big book about the history of salt, hear the howls of a slugged kid through the earbuds, look hard at the battery indicator, and so on and so forth. “If they THINK I’m not getting a CIGARETTE when they let me off this DAMN PLANE then I WILL hurt somebody. Oh yes. Oh yes I will. Oh, you better believe I will…I SAID SHUT UP ALREADY…as soon as I get me a cigarette.”
We took off eventually and I had to turn off the iPod, which put me in a perfect place to hear every complaint that Lurleen aired over the next thirty minutes. She never liked her brother anyway. Y’all’s damn daddies better not complain about taking you next weekend because I am wore out. How come they don’t just bang the plane down there on the runway; the other planes’d get out of the way right quick if she was driving. She could have driven to St.Louis in the time this was taking. See if you’d catch her on a plane ever again. There was going to be some hell to pay once we got to DC and she got herself a cigarette and an alcoholic drink. She \\would hurt somebody; oh, trust her for that. On and on and on.
I imagine she really was upset and worried, and I guess I don’t blame her for that, really…but you know how time stops, sometimes, and you look at your cell phone and it’s only been two minutes but something is obviously wrong with the phone because CLEARLY it’s been, like, five hours. Time stopped; the force of Lurleen’s angry, disheveled, endless displeasure was such that time actually stopped and I cursed myself for not charging up the iPod beforehand and for being unable to concentrate on my very interesting book about the history of salt and I clutched the sides of my tiny narrow seat and tried to take some deep cleansing breaths and began work on the creation of the soon-to-be-formed despotic state of Chiarastan. Fortunately, there are only two laws in Chiarastan; you’re pretty much on your own there in terms of governance. Actually, there’s only really one law, with sort of a sub-clause. Here it is:
I. You must be SILENT on any small commuter plane that has barely enough room to stand up in and which may or may not have a bathroom. You are allowed to ask the curiously incapable flight attendant for some ginger ale and you are allowed the occasional expressive sigh as the pilot jokes that this time we’ll make it to Dulles, folks, see if we don’t, and thanks for your patience. Other than that, you must maintain…and ensure that your grubby and intractable children maintain…the strictest silence at all times. Flouters of this law will have to face the tender mercies of the ruler of Chiarastan, who may go so far as to stare disapprovingly in their direction and furrow her brow menacingly.
Sub-clause: This also goes for the bus, with special dispensations given to those who make any attempts to wrangle loud drunken passengers or who express appreciation for another passenger’s cute shoes.
Well, anyway. Lurleen. We finally did land and she shrieked “IT’S ABOUT FREAKIN’ TIME, NOW GET ME OFF THIS SHIT-KICKER,” and as I headed for a refreshing two hour wait in the customer service line (where I would meet and have a lovely conversation with a ringleted energy healer named Blue who offered me some sublingual flower essence that she promised would “help center you”) I saw her haul her struggling kids over to some desk or another, gesticulating wildly and screaming the whole time about her nicotine needs. I ended up having to stay in DC overnight at a hotel with a disappointing lack of Law and Order re-runs but with nicely threadcounted sheets and a very early wake-up call. Now it’s time to brush my teeth and get into bed and forget I ever was on any tiny little tin can of a plane with the single most annoying individual I’ve had the pleasure to encounter recently.