More fun at the Airport...
Last night I was just hanging around the house, eating hot pockets, playing Ragnarok, etc., when after a quick glance at the clock, something suddenly occurred to me. I had to pick my parents up from BWI Airport in just one hour. I scrambled to gather my wallet and keys and dashed down the stairs to my car. I jumped in, slammed the key into the ignition and gunned it down our small, cracked driveway, only to be greeted by a sharp and glaringly obtrusive scraping/buzzing sound. I spun around and looked behind me with a cringe, half-expecting to see some sort of Christopher Reeve-esque ruin crumpled beneath my shiny black bumper.
To my surprise, not only was there no pedestrian/car/robot ninja behind my car, but the street behind me was completely empty! I slowly turned back to the dashboard in confusion, looked down, and noticed that my body was now covered in the soft, orange glow of the gas light. Turns out my car just beeps obnoxiously every time it desires more fuel. So I breathed a sigh of relief and laughed at how jumpy I had become, before slamming the car back into reverse and barrelling up the street towards the gas station.
I arrived at the airport in record time, zig-zagging in and out of traffic, flying past minivans and 18-wheelers alike, several times coming dangerously close to reenacting Jason Priestley's 2002 Nascar publicity stunt, all in the name of not proving my father right by forgetting to pick them up. As I jumped from my parked car and ran to the terminal, I glanced at an airport clock and realized that I had left my house, filled up my tank, and traveled all the way to the airport in just 30 minutes -- half the time it should have taken me. I slowed down, and with a wide-eyed look around the spacious and vacant airport, I stopped in my tracks. "Damn..." I thought. "Now what?"
I decided to make my way towards the terminal and wait for my parents outside the security checkpoint, amid the gargantuan, shifty-eyed security guards and weary, red-eyed businessmen. I slowly meandered my way closer, when out of absolutely nowhere, a flash of familiar green eyes grasped my attention. My body froze as I craned my neck to the right, fixing my vision directly on the source of the disturbance and staring like a buffoon, bewildered and confused, trying desperately to make some sense of what I was looking at. "There's no way..." I kept thinking. "That's not her."
In front of me, sitting on a bench and looking back at me with the same appearance of puzzlement that I was most likely projecting to the entire east wing of the airport, was a young girl with blazing red hair and bright green eyes. "Jamie?!" She gasped out loud.
"Janice?!" I choked back in surprise. She was an old friend of mine from junior high, and until last night, I hadn't heard one word from her in over a year. "You're the last person I expected to run into here," I said excitedly, as my surprise faded.
"You too! I can't believe this!" She smiled, jumped from the bench, and made her way over to me. We started talking, and ended up chatting about old times and laughing as we reminisced for the next half-hour or so, as we both waited for our parents to emerge from behind the monstrous and angry security guards so we could chauffer them around town and back to our homes. Her parents were returning from a flight to Utah, it turned out, and mine were coming back from a vacation far away from me in Disney World. After a while, her parents came out from the terminal and met with us. I exchanged greetings and chatted with them as I waited for mine to come back from the plane.
"How was the flight?" I asked Janice's mother.
"Well..." she said with a cringe, still visibly shaking from the rough landing, "Compared to the flights on 9/11, this one was a cakewalk." I couldn't help but burst out with laughter at that, then cautiously glance around to see if anyone was about to stick a shiv in my kidney for laughing at that.
Just then, I saw my parents walking towards us and waved. "Hey!" I yelled, and they waddled towards us hurriedly, hands and backpacks overstuffed with Disney merchandise, only to spent the next fifteen minutes recounting the events of their vacation in vivid detail to all of us. I was finally able to pry them away, say goodbye to Janice and her family, and get my own family into the car.
Thankfully, the drive home was far less eventful than the one there, and when I finally arrived back home, I collapsed on my bed and passed out, only to be rudely awakened a few hours later by my noisy alarm clock. Today was an extremely early and frustrating day for me. What happened at work is a whole other story.
I forgot why I started writing this...
Oh yeah, I'm tired.
To my surprise, not only was there no pedestrian/car/robot ninja behind my car, but the street behind me was completely empty! I slowly turned back to the dashboard in confusion, looked down, and noticed that my body was now covered in the soft, orange glow of the gas light. Turns out my car just beeps obnoxiously every time it desires more fuel. So I breathed a sigh of relief and laughed at how jumpy I had become, before slamming the car back into reverse and barrelling up the street towards the gas station.
I arrived at the airport in record time, zig-zagging in and out of traffic, flying past minivans and 18-wheelers alike, several times coming dangerously close to reenacting Jason Priestley's 2002 Nascar publicity stunt, all in the name of not proving my father right by forgetting to pick them up. As I jumped from my parked car and ran to the terminal, I glanced at an airport clock and realized that I had left my house, filled up my tank, and traveled all the way to the airport in just 30 minutes -- half the time it should have taken me. I slowed down, and with a wide-eyed look around the spacious and vacant airport, I stopped in my tracks. "Damn..." I thought. "Now what?"
I decided to make my way towards the terminal and wait for my parents outside the security checkpoint, amid the gargantuan, shifty-eyed security guards and weary, red-eyed businessmen. I slowly meandered my way closer, when out of absolutely nowhere, a flash of familiar green eyes grasped my attention. My body froze as I craned my neck to the right, fixing my vision directly on the source of the disturbance and staring like a buffoon, bewildered and confused, trying desperately to make some sense of what I was looking at. "There's no way..." I kept thinking. "That's not her."
In front of me, sitting on a bench and looking back at me with the same appearance of puzzlement that I was most likely projecting to the entire east wing of the airport, was a young girl with blazing red hair and bright green eyes. "Jamie?!" She gasped out loud.
"Janice?!" I choked back in surprise. She was an old friend of mine from junior high, and until last night, I hadn't heard one word from her in over a year. "You're the last person I expected to run into here," I said excitedly, as my surprise faded.
"You too! I can't believe this!" She smiled, jumped from the bench, and made her way over to me. We started talking, and ended up chatting about old times and laughing as we reminisced for the next half-hour or so, as we both waited for our parents to emerge from behind the monstrous and angry security guards so we could chauffer them around town and back to our homes. Her parents were returning from a flight to Utah, it turned out, and mine were coming back from a vacation far away from me in Disney World. After a while, her parents came out from the terminal and met with us. I exchanged greetings and chatted with them as I waited for mine to come back from the plane.
"How was the flight?" I asked Janice's mother.
"Well..." she said with a cringe, still visibly shaking from the rough landing, "Compared to the flights on 9/11, this one was a cakewalk." I couldn't help but burst out with laughter at that, then cautiously glance around to see if anyone was about to stick a shiv in my kidney for laughing at that.
Just then, I saw my parents walking towards us and waved. "Hey!" I yelled, and they waddled towards us hurriedly, hands and backpacks overstuffed with Disney merchandise, only to spent the next fifteen minutes recounting the events of their vacation in vivid detail to all of us. I was finally able to pry them away, say goodbye to Janice and her family, and get my own family into the car.
Thankfully, the drive home was far less eventful than the one there, and when I finally arrived back home, I collapsed on my bed and passed out, only to be rudely awakened a few hours later by my noisy alarm clock. Today was an extremely early and frustrating day for me. What happened at work is a whole other story.
I forgot why I started writing this...
Oh yeah, I'm tired.