I'd just survived a week in a suburban Florida subdivision with my mother and step dad, both of whom I adore, but believe me when people say, “Oh, wow -Florida - must be nice!” I just smile. As if we even get within sniffing distance of the Gulf of Mexico. My main entertainment, aside from traipsing diligently around their neighborhood twice a day in the hours when I can elude the omnipresent heat, is playing marathon Rummikub, a game much like Rummy but played with numbered squares like Scrabble.
We did go out to dinner often which is a treat for me since I live in a small town in the Rocky Mountains and manage to get to a restaurant at least three times a year whether I need it or not. And the seafood and prices are amazing, all, of course, paid for by my step dad who wouldn't think of letting me dig in my pocket.
Anyway, they've long since given up the job of driving me to the airport, being 84 and 90 years old. So, at the end of the week with a 7:45am flight out, the Astrovan picked me up at 4:15. Yeah, AM. I'd slept lousy, knowing that I'd surely set the alarm wrong or wouldn't hear it or something, so, wide-eyed, I popped out of bed at 3 o'clock and got ready for the long ordeal.
The van driver was friendly and talkative, and I did get to sit next to a nice older lady who loved football and was huge Broncos fan, so we had a great conversation about all things pigskin. At the airport, I whiled away the hours, reading, sipping coffee and watching. The airports are amazing now, and I always seem to get pulled out of line for the “thorough” security check of which the primary segment involves baring one's soles and having one's carry-on bag ravaged. Knowing I would get a meal consisting of seven pretzel rings, I had packed a lunch - you know, string cheese, a granola bar, an apple, some crunchy snacks, etc. As the security agent dug through my bag, he pulled out the lunch and asked if I was afraid I'd get hungry. The nerve! I said, "Yes, I'm afraid I'll get hungry. I've got a 10 hour day ahead of me and you people don't feed us anymore!" That shut his pie hole.
When I'd checked in, I was early enough to get a good seat - bulkhead/window - oh, yeah! No one in front of me, plenty of legroom and a window seat to boot. When I finally boarded, I felt like I'd been on the road for hours and found seat D and E already filled. I climbed across into E. In the aisle seat was a fortyish guy who looked innocuous and in the middle seat was a young black man sporting gang tattoos on both arms and clad in a pale blue, double-knit shorts outfit with the crotch of his pants stretched neatly between his knees. He looked relatively harmless so I sat down and arranged myself.
I always carry reading material and was perusing a magazine waiting for the plane to begin taxiing the runway. Suddenly, the young man rummaged around the pocket in front of him and pulled out the barf bag. Oh, God, no!
He leaned forward and urped right into that bag, and I pressed my nose to the window. He urped again, and again. Then he wiped his mouth and sat back, holding the neck of the clearly liquid filled bag out in front of him.
“Are you okay?” I asked with great trepidation.
“Yeah, this is my first flight.”
“Oh, really? Well, it will get easier. Just relax.”
I felt some relief, inasmuch as I had thought, what now? The flu?
We taxied down the runway, and he urped again. Now I was getting nervous. He would lay his head back against the seat with the icepack offered by the flight attendant plastered against his forehead until the next urp. They finally provided him with a short, black trash bag and he traded it off every now and then. The flight attendants were getting nervous.
“Do we have a doctor on this flight? If so, please come forward. We have a passenger in need of care.”
Lucky me. I was sitting next to him.
A nurse appeared and took his pulse and asked him a lot of questions. He said he had acid reflux disease and often vomited blood. Great.
The nurse filled out a form, and he signed it. I watched the movie I had gotten for five bucks.
Finally, one of the flight attendants slipped me a five-dollar bill as a compensation for my less than enjoyable trip.
