Big Snow 2009: We Bail on Airport, but Where's Grandpa?

"Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 61





After 20 minutes in the bathroom we headed back down to the gate.

An agent was there in the usual uniform. He showed that our plane had returned to the gate in Atlanta, having not left the ground. I let him know we wanted to bail and leave another day, and could he help me with that or should I go to the ticket counter?

Ticket counter.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked with a smile.

“Yes. And I want to get my bags back,” I said politely.

“I don’t know if you can get your bags back….If my supervisor’s there, she can probably make that happen,” he said.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Miss April,” he said.
*
At the ticket counter a young man named Derrick was helping us. “You know there’s going to be a change fee for that?” I said fine, it was cheaper than spending two nights in a Baltimore hotel.

After he punched in our information his eyes got very big.

“What do they want — a thousand dollars to do this?” I asked.

“Almost,” he replied in a little voice.

I looked him right in the eye with the kindest and most direct gaze. “There’s someone here who can make that go away,” I said. “And I know this is not your fault,” I added.

“Just a moment,” he said, and went back to punching in numbers.

“Mom, is it over yet?” said the older son.

“Not yet,” I said.

“I’ll just hide under my coat until this is over,” he said.

I told the guy behind the counter what my son was doing. The ticketing agent really liked this idea. I told him spring was going to come, the planes would come, they would go, like clockwork, and everybody would be happy. He said he was just waiting for that.

“I got it down to $700,” he said, apologetically.

“Whatever happened to the change fee? You know, $75 to change a ticket?” I asked.

“Actually, I just waived the change fee,” he replied.

“So…if I hang around here for three or four more hours with my kids, my flight gets cancelled, I wait in line with a hundred other people, your airline will let me change my tickets for free.”

“Yes….that’s about right,” he said.

Just then Miss April came by and looked at the computer.

“What’s going on with these people?” she asked, looking at the computer and not at me.
Quietly he explained.

“What change fees, honey?” she said to him, typing away on the keyboard. “They’re not leaving because of the weather….” And I couldn’t hear any more.

The next thing I knew I had my boarding passes in my hand, I was on the flight in two days that I asked for and no cost to me.

But my dad was somewhere between Baltimore and the Bay Bridge, and we didn't have our luggage back yet.