The Little Bastard

I was terrorized in an airport once. I had a flight from Portland to Kennedy to Long Beach to Oakland. Why they do that is because everyone may be going different places and they don't want to drop you off in Oakland first then go back to Dallas or Newark for the other guys. That makes sense even if it is inconvenient. Here comes the "motherfucker" sentence. It was snowing and the wind was blowing like a motherfucker in Portland.

 My idea was, fuck this I'm not getting on. I did have a pint of rum which I knew would be a big help no matter what. It had been fairly nerve wracking getting it in there and I didn't want to try it again. I'd had to put it in my pack in a shampoo bottle and didn't want to lose it to "Homeland Security."  So, I went to the bathroom and drank it. I readied myself for flight.

  The rum calmed my nerves, I most certainly felt better with it than without it, until I looked out the window again. It was bad, it was getting worse and a little man in a chimp suit came out of a door and told us our flight was delayed due to mechanical difficulties. Forty five more minutes. He could have told us anything and we would have had to take it. He still chose "mechanical difficulties."

"You dirty little bastard" I thought. Why not "the pilots are late" or "we're out of ice temporarily" or "the fuel is frozen, we're thawing it out?" We're already flying in a whiteout and now the plane may come apart sending me, for sure me, screaming into the skies over New England with no hope. What a little assbite. He wasn't coming with us. I knew that, somehow, and I was right.

   Now tell me that's not terrorizing the helpless herd. I don't have to get on, but if  I don't I'm stuck in Maine during a blizzard that's picking up speed and I'm in the airport. I can leave of course, find a nice warm bar and use it for a waiting room, play some dice, swap some lies, watch a hockey game, but then I have to get scanned again before I can come back and who knows what I might try the next time after drinking all day. I may have decided to go get the little bastard who started all this misery.

LA was eight hours away. Long Beach was advertising low seventy degree days for a week. Oakland was at 64 already. I got on the plane and ordered gin."Bring it as soon as you can, three of them. Please." Everything went the right way. I was home in California that night. I hope the little assbite got some kind of justice but I don't know. What a little bastard. I'll tell you, there is no way I would have even gone to the airport in those conditions today, mostly because I don't drink anymore. I have decided to live.