Dutiful journey – Day One: Stuck in the middle with you

I’m in Chicago’s O’Hare airport as I type this – and the only reason I’m not crying is because I’ve just had a Pizzeria Uno’s sausage mini-pizza.

Plus, I’m marveling as airport employees transport the fat, white ladies to their gates in motorized carts. (It’d be much more fun if they used the carts to herd the fat ladies to their gates – make ‘em run like cattle!!! Make them work those glitterized sweatshirts!)

And – when you’re sitting at the hub concourse for such exotic destinations as Sioux City, Des Moines and Tulsa – it’s hard not to give fashion advice. Like to the 20-somethings who believe that by outlining your entire eye in dark blue eye liner and plucking your eyebrows to extreme points you will end up finding your Prince Charming – as you look like something that just crawled out of the backseat of a Trans Am.

And WTF is up with “where are my eyebrows” Barbie? OMG – and she comes with where are my eyebrows Mom!

Aaaah.

I HATE the Midwest

I just spent two desperate hours on a packed plane, in a middle seat, with the most bizarre assortment of people around me. And to add insult to injury, I just schlepped the equivalent of a 5k marathon to get to my next concourse.

People say I’m ensuring my entry into heaven by making these trips – well, I hope so - cause not even Hell would want me right now.

Let’s get started – I’m on my way from New York to Nebraska (just typing that makes me want to scream and run). My father is about to undergo yet another (preventable) major surgery .

But my personal anger with him aside, I – the dutiful son – am flying to Nebraska to assist my mother with getting Dad to the hospital and making the 160-mile roundtrips every day to see him.

I left Albany this morning, bright and early. Full of hope and promise.

That ended, however, when I found myself seated on a completely full plane, second row from the rear, in the middle. The ONLY saving grace is that there were many burly men (and some pretty hefty women) that did not end up next to me. I got scary bad poetry man and stinky tomato juice lady instead – but we’ll come back to them.

The flight started with a shock – I boarded the plane and immediately encountered someone I thought was Ann Coulter. I cursed myself for checking my firearm!

Then I realized it was our air hostess – soon to be known as angry, clumsy, bitter air hostess – we’ll come back to her too.

After we were all safely belted into our Barbie mini-seats, scary bad poet’s elbow firmly lodged in my side, our thighs smashed together by an aggressive wide stance that makes Larry Craig look like a piker – we were welcomed by our flight porter, Jerome.

Jerome can only be described as the love child of Rudy from the Fat Albert show and Jar Jar Binks. Not even Bill Cosby could have created a character like this.

Jerome began to speak in what I thought was either Esperanto or Ebonics:

“Hebalo, Ladies and Gennslemen – Weba wanna welcub you abore dab united fright –hamma dee-dee boo doo…” then he’d just start riffing with nonsense sounds, designed to confuse and frighten us into never watching Bill Cosby routines ever again.

It certainly made the routine safety instructions speech much more entertaining as Jerome stumbled and bee-dee-doo-dooed his way through the instructions. Well, at least I was amused.

As for angry clumsy air hostess – OMFG. How did they ever hire this woman? I would seriously have her checked for an inner ear imbalance. This woman bounced off every seat and every aisle passenger on the plane – and had the nerve to look angry at whatever/whomever she bounced off of. Nice.

So – back to my seatmates. I’ve included a handy diagram to illustrate: the Bermuda Triangle in which I was seated.

To my left, was – fortunately, a woman of the rather smallish persuasion – diminutive enough to actually seem to FIT into an economy seat…and cross her legs. Despite my name for her earlier, she did not enter the plane reeking of stinky tomato juice – she did, however, consume two cans of Bloody Mary mix (sans vodka – what’s the damn point?) and then proceeded to delicately belch the foul substance for the rest of the trip.

Scary hand jive man to my right was a bit more complex. He began the trip by making fists and scary jazz hand movements during takeoff, then he began to compose mystical verse to (yes, I peeked) what appeared to be his newlywed wife. He spoke of the magical adventure upon which they were embarking and used words like “destiny” and “soulmate” without shame. And somehow – unbelievably – he managed to use the word “squirrel” as well. I don’t want to know…

I averted my eyes and avoided contact with him, thinking the hand jiving indicated some kind of mental imbalance – until we approached our destination. Then I realized he had issues with takeoff and landing. In fact, as we approached the airport – he began not only to hand jive more frenetically, but actually assumed the crash position as we landed.

Dear Jebus.

I have rarely exited an aircraft more quickly and more aggressively. I basically climbed over people to exit this plane.

I look forward to the last leg of this journey. I HOPE the plane will be less crowded - but hey – it’s only an hour-plus flight – how bad can it be?

Update:

Oh – believe me – it can be bad. Tune in later to find out how bad.