I remember the first time I navigated an airport on my own without my parents. I was heading home with my brothers and sister after attending an awesome music camp in Indiana. My dad had hired us a ride to take us to Chicago international airport, the place we were flying out of.
That airport is definitely not the airport you want to be navigating the first time on your own. It feels like utter chaos. I had gotten 3 hours of sleep the last three nights there, including an all niter the last night since our ride left at 3'oclock am. I was completely wiped out. After unloading all our luggage and instruments, after arriving at the airport, we just stood inside the terminal taking in the scene. People were running here and there, trying to catch their flights, managers were trying to create some form of order... it was chaos. Almost reminded of home. Almost…
I took a deep breath and stepped up to the computer to get our tickets. I had gone over this, in detail, multiple times with my Dad, so I was confident that I wouldn’t have any problems. Riiiiiiggghht. I hit all the right buttons, entered in the correct information... and came up with nothing. The thing wouldn’t pull up our tickets! I rubbed my hands together nervously and tried again. Again I got nothing. After I yelled and gave the thing a couple good kicks I stepped back. It was then I noticed my siblings staring at me. Not wanting to worry them I flashed my charmers smile. No problem, apparently this computer was having problems, so I walked to another one and smiled thinking, "this system has nothing on me." I would live to regret those thoughts.
The second computer was no help. Neither was the third, or the one after that. No matter what computer I tried our tickets would not show up. They had vanished. Our plane was supposed to leave in an hour and a half and we couldn’t get our tickets. At this point I began to, shall we say, become slightly agitated? I mean, why shouldn’t I be nervous? I didn’t want to miss our flight, and what if our tickets had been stolen by terrorists or something?! I decided it was time to call home and get some advice from a smart guy named dad. After a few rings I heard a groggy voice mumble "hello?". I was like "hey dad! I can’t get our tickets! The computers won’t even pull up any of our information! What should I do?! Can you help me?! I can’t get our tickets!" I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something to that affect. When I ran out of things to say I listened for the instruction I knew was sure to come. After a brief pause my dad said, "Let me call you back." I was like "No dad! Wait!! You don’t understand!" but he had already hung up. I tried to think of why he would do that. It was then that I realized we were 3 hours ahead of them. It was really 3oclockAM back home. Dad was probably trying to wake himself up.
After a minute or two had passed he called me back. I went back to the computer and he walked me through a few things. Still came up with nothing. He told me to get in line for checking bags and talk to the person there. Ok. I hung up and we got in line. We barely beat the rush. There were about 30 people in front of us and another 30-40 got behind us.
Around this time I began to count how many bags we had. I turned and was astonished to see Daniel (my 14 year old brother) walking briskly away with an airport staff person. I was also surprised to see my twin, Brandon, running after them, leaving Ashley and me with most of the luggage. I couldn’t call them, since I was the only one with a cell phone, but I didn’t want to go after them and lose our place in line, and leaving Ashley wasn’t an option. I decided to wait in line and see how things played out.
When we finally got to the front I explained our problem to her and asked if she could help us out. She frowned at me and told me to try the computer right there at the counter. I tried and once again came up with nothing. Exasperated she came around and tried herself. Again nothing. By this time she was not a happy camper. She made it very clear that she wasn’t appreciating these difficulties. That made two of us. I tried to be as pleasant as possible but that didn’t help anything. Scowling she went back to her computer and had our information up in a few minutes. Once we got the tickets printed out I began to relax a little. Things were going to be ok. Not.
Next we had to check our bags. Between the 4 of us we had 4 bags to check, 6 carry on bags, and our instruments. As the lady began to weigh our bags I looked around apprehensively for Daniel and Brandon. There was no sign of them anywhere. I sighed and turned back to the lady. She was just finishing weighing the last bag, which happened to be both mine and Daniels. I looked at the scale and my eyes bugged out. 79 pounds! We were almost 30 pounds over weight! I almost panicked. It was going to cost another 50 dollars to take that bag home. There was one problem with that. I didn’t have any money. I was trying to figure out what to do when my dad called me. He wanted to know how things were going. I filled him in on the latest development and asked for some help. He was quite for the most part. Then he suggested we divide things from that bag into the others. Great plan. Except the only 2 bags that had extra room were with Brandon and Daniel.
I asked the lady where they might have gone, since Daniel had his cello. She directed me to oversize area and told me to take all our bags with me. Have you ever tried carrying, pushing, pulling 6 things of baggage? Let me tell you, it is no small cup of tea! I literally had to kick one bag in front of me while pulling a bag and carrying three others. Ashley wasn’t much better. After walking like this for a few yards I saw an airport manager sitting doing nothing, so I asked him if he would be so kind as to help my sister and I with our load. He said no!! I couldn’t believe it! I was quickly fraying at the edges. He was quick to offer to lead us to the right place. I was so upset at him. He was being plain lazy. What I really wanted to do was give him a good kick in the behind! Instead I followed him as he walked along leisurely.
Anyway we finally found Daniel and Brandon. They had just finished getting Daniels cello through the oversize crew. After chewing them out (mostly Daniel) for taking off without telling me what they were doing and where they were going, I filled them in on the bag situation. We tried to divide things among the other bags, but we didn’t take off that much weight at all.
At this time I said a silent prayer asking God for help. Things were just not going well. I kid you not, 2 seconds later a baggage guy steps up to me and say’s “You’re blessed, God is looking out for you.” Then he took the overweight bag and put it through without charging us. I have never been so grateful for anything in my life. God was definitely watching over us.
After that we went back to check the rest of our bags. Would you know the line had got even longer! Right then I had had enough. Without even hesitating I marched to the front of the line, to the same lady, and told her we were ready. Frowning, she opened her mouth, probably to say something about waiting in line, but I didn’t give her a chance. I gave her my no nonsense lady, I want to be anywhere but here, I’m exhausted, angry, and just want to go home look, then I again told her we were ready to check our bags. To her credit she didn’t say anything and quickly processed us. I thanked her, and we moved on. Thankfully we made it through security without any drama. That would have been too much.
