I hate to fly.
Generally, I agree with the theory that if we were intended to fly, we would've been born with wings. But noooooo, that wasn't good enough for us Americans, who already had perfectly good wooden cars pulled by horses and cars with no rubber on the tires. No, the Wright brothers had to go and build an airplane, thereby initiating a sequence of events that would lead to my utter annoyance last weekend.
It all started last Wednesday night, when I and two other Wildcat employees, Noah and Ben, were waiting to board a flight to Washington, D.C., where we would attend a conference. I was excited because we were going to have a layover in Phoenix for an hour, and I was going to meet my girlfriend for a drink.
So there we were, waiting, discussing how fun it was going to be in exotic Phoenix, even if it was only for one measly hour, when the little electronic sign above the gate read, "Flight 634 DELAYED." But that wasn't our flight, so we kept on talking. Then the other sign read, "Flight 456 DELAYED." So Ben went to see what was going on, and it turned out the weather in Phoenix was delaying the plane, which was to fly down to Tucson, pick us up, and fly back.
So I went to call my girlfriend, who had already left. I left her a message anyway, since it would do her oh-so-much good to get it after she returned home from the airport. Great, I thought, now I'll only get to see her for like five minutes.
Five minutes turned out to be optimistic. The rain delayed the plane so long that we would miss our connecting flight in Phoenix. Murmurs of "Wait, don't we live in a desert?" filled Gate 9.
Our flight was rerouted, and we were to leave from Tucson to Dallas at the ripe time of 2:55 a.m. We were left to roam the confines of Tucson International Airport at midnight in search of food and a way to kill three hours. Yeah, right.
So we sent one person in our entourage out to hunt for nourishment. While she was gone, I was paged over the airport intercom and asked to "pick up a white courtesy phone." It was my girlfriend, calling from the airport in Phoenix. I decided to take a tactful approach.
ME: "It wasn't my fault!"
HER: "Uh-huh. What happened?"
ME: "It was the plane! The plane! The rain delayed the plane! The rain delayed the plane!"
HER: "Why are you rhyming?"
ME: "No reason. Anyway, sorry. Thanks for waiting for me though."
Immediately, I thought this experience would make a really good ...
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