I recently took a vacation with my family. The trip was excellent.
Now let me tell you about the flight home!
We were traveling from Denver to O’Hare, and storms earlier in the week had wreaked havoc with flight schedules. This meant that after driving two hours from the mountains to the airport, we watched as our flight was incrementally delayed over and over again, until we finally got a boarding time 3 hours after our originally scheduled departure. This put us into Chicago after 10pm.
Have I mentioned yet that I was traveling with a 2 year old and a 4 year old? I should; that’s a critical plot point.
OK, so we’re on the flight with our two adorable little crabapples, and we try to soothe them with a DVD. No dice: the girls won’t wear headphones, and the flight attendant won’t let us play the machine without them. I think everyone around us much preferred the sound of Strawberry Shortcake’s Saccharin, “That’s berry nice of you!” to my girls’ tantrums, but hey, policies first, right? We finally landed (after circling), and the plane pulled into the Penalty Box. Not good, we’re all thinking. Sure enough, the pilot came on to tell us what we already knew: we had no gate, and would be parking ourselves for 20 minutes or more while we waited for a gate to open and the jetway to clear.
Have I mentioned yet that the 2 year old was having a bad bought of diarrhea, and that we’d burned through all our wipes and were down to our last diaper? And that her last ‘splosion came right when the seat belt sign came on… about an hour ago?
My wife, bless her soul, was showing remarkable patience, as was my 2 year old, bless her soul, who had been dealing with incredible discomfort for the last hour. When the plane engines settled down, I offered to change the little one quickly, before she had another ‘splosion and we had a real problem on our hands. And laps…
No sooner had I reached across the aisle to help my little girl off my wife’s lap and stood her in the aisle than the flight attendant admonished everyone to take their seats.
I got up and picked up my daughter so everyone could see she had been yelling at a toddler. There was a general chorus of laughs and “C’mon, lady, give us a break”‘s from those who could see me and had heard enough of my conversation with my wife to know what was going on. Then a voice boomed out, silencing the chorus: it was the pilot from the cockpit. “WE’VE BEEN DELAYED ENOUGH. IF YOU CAN’T STAY IN YOUR SEATS WE’LL STAY HERE ALL NIGHT!”
So what did I do? Naturally, I walked to the back of the plane, that’s what! There–I’ve never seen this before–the flight attendant had barricaded the lavatories using seatbelts from the last row and linking them together across the aile. In addition to the barricade, she also met me with a wagging finger and a stern warning.
I told her my daughter had been sitting in “unpleasantness” for an hour and if we’d be sitting for another 20 minutes, then I’d like to change her quickly, please.
She told me to change her at my seat.
I agreed to do so… provided that she was willing to clean up the mess I’d be leaving for her, since I was out of wipes or anything else remotely absorbant.
She called the cockpit and fifteen seconds later, I was in the bathroom putting a fresh diaper on my daughter and seeing her smile for the first time in 6 hours.
When it was time to deplane, the pilots didn’t come out to say goodbye like they normally do. They stayed in the cockpit with the door closed. Maybe they were busy, or maybe they were parents themselves and felt a little sheepish about their part in what just happened. Who knows.
All I know is, that was one of my favorite flying experiences. I don’t have too many funny stories about snotty flight attendants getting their come-uppance, so for me, it was all kind of funny. I’ve made a lot of people laugh by sharing it with them, and I’ve heard plenty of similarly ridiculous travel stories in response.
I figured out some years ago that a bad trip can ruin an entire vacation, and that a bad vacation can ruin a year. About the same time, I discovered that the biggest travel disasters were usually the funniest trips in hindsight. And this flight home from Denver proved, once again, that life is a lot more fun when you accept that there is no such thing as a bad vacation, that your only choice is to have a great trip or a great story.
(Or, if you’re super lucky, both!)
 | Enjoy this blog? Listen to my new podcast, Beyond Social. |
I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 