Monday, November 07, 2005

Easy Come, Easy Go

After buying my plane ticket for this weekend, going to Target with Faye on Saturday afternoon and then the Mall of America with Uncle George on Sunday, I was a bit anxious about how much I had spent. I felt the need to buy warmer clothes, now that reality has set in and I understand that it really does get cold in Mexico City – maybe not Chicago winter cold, but cold enough to need long sleeves, pants, sweaters and maybe even eventually even gloves! With Faye I also bought a lot of candy for my students, now that I know better what you can and can’t find in Mexico. I didn’t buy any more licorice however, not common at all in Mexico, since the students don’t really like it. Imagine that most of their candy is covered with chile powder and then I give them licorice, which hardly has any flavor to begin with.

All of that spending was the “easy go” – the “easy come” happened shortly after I boarded my connecting flight from Dallas to Mexico City. The flight was oversold and the airline offered a $200 voucher for anyone to take the next flight. I pushed the call button for the flight attendant and raced down the aisle to volunteer, ran back to take my stuff and more than happily reported to the next hours flight. On this next flight, they offered $500 to anyone who could take the next flight – I took it again. Even as they offered more for anyone to wait to take a flight the next day, I figured I should report back to school after already missing three days. So, I did board the final flight, and still arrived in Mexico before 9 PM, with $700 in travel vouchers with American Airlines to spend within the next year.

As I boarded the airplane, I saw a fly on my plane. I wondered if he is from Dallas? Will he get to Mexico City and not know where he is and not understand a word the other flies say? Do flies even speak to each other? Like birds, do flies also fly south for the winter? Is this just the smartest fly in the world, hopping on a plane to head south rather than flapping its tiny wings for thousands of miles? I think I’ve spent too much time alone today.

The fly went away, but now it’s back and flying back and forth between the passengers on each side of me. Yes, I’m stuck in the middle; but it’s a luxurious exit row with plenty of legroom. It could be a lot worse too, I could be next to the guy who was smacking his gum behind me in line, or seated next to one of the French people, there’s a big group of them, who have TERRIBLE body odor – people keep making faces as they pass by those five rows. I took out my scented hand lotion and rubbed some in below my nose hoping to pick up its scent rather than the Frenchie’s funky smell. I’m only seated next to “The Sniffler” – at least once every minute he sniffs and on the other side of me is a lady who is doing nothing. It doesn’t sound bad to do nothing, but to just sit there and stare forward for more than two hours . . . It’s such odd behavior that there was a Seinfeld episode based on people who do nothing while sitting on a plane.