Home: and why United Airlines is Satan

March 11, 2012

When DJ dropped me off last night, what I saw in my backyard was the gleam, by moonlight, of a crowd of daffodils.

Despite the airline’s best efforts, I did not actually miss a flight, though making them was a grueling–and wholly unnecessary–ordeal. The details are so stupidly intricate that I’m not sure I’ve figured them out yet. . . but, at the Valletta airport I’m told–ominously–that they can’t give me boarding passes for all the flights, that I must pick them up in Munich. We get to Munich 20 minutes before the flight to Chicago takes off, and I make it to the counter at a dead run, to discover that I am not on the manifest–though I really am; there’s some sort of mysterious distinction between my ticket and those of the other passengers-- and they can’t print me a boarding pass. I show them my paperwork, and they type in numbers, slowly, meticulously, while the German voice whispers “final boarding call for Chicago. . . all passengers” etc. . . etc. Finally I blow up and thunder jetzt bitte! This gives the molasses typist an excuse to pause and lecture me on how they can’t print a boarding pass unless I’m on the list and, yes, I AM on the list, but something is preventing the issuing of a boarding pass nevertheless. . . Well, we get past that one, and I sit down in the seat I knew I had from the beginning. The flight was endless, but otherwise not bad, and I drank myself into a state of sentimental euphoria. I’m glad it was dark in the cabin.

The usual customs crap in Chicago. The helpful luggage person tell me to go to Terminal 2, where my next flight originates.
“I don’t have a boarding pass.”
“They’ll give you one at the gate.”
I get to Terminal 2 and am going through security and they ask for my boarding pass. I say I haven’t got one, that I’ll get one at the gate. They affirm that I can’t get to the gate without a boarding pass, and point to a United kiosk where they can help me. The woman at the United kiosk waves me away without looking at me. When I begin to speak to her she runs through a door and disappears. I try the machine. I type in my information and it says. “This reservation requires special attention.” I go back to the security guy and he says that I have to go to the main UA desk, then, in terminal 1. I get on the train going the wrong way (this is the one and only thing that is not the airline’s fault) and after passing through terminals 3,4,5, and remote parking, 5, 4, 3, 2, I’m finally at 1. I stand in a long line to get to the counter.
“Do you have baggage to check?”
“No, my baggage is already checked.”
“Then you’ll have to use the machine.”
I type in the info as I had before, and it says, “This reservation requires special attention.” The lady says she can’t help me, but I can talk to the man in the sweater vest. I wait in line to talk to the man in the sweater vest. I tell him the problem and he, sure that I had made some mistake, types in exactly the information had typed twice before. “This reservation requires special attention.”
He says, “I don’t know what the matter is. You’ll have to talk to an agent.”
“An agent sent me to you.”
“Try a different agent. How about her?”
“There’s a line. . . I’ve already waited–“
”It looks to me like the line is going pretty fast.”
I wait in that line. The lady says, “Just type in your information on the machine and–“
I explain that will not avail. She tries it. It does not avail. She says, “May I see some ID?”
Assuming she’s stalling before moving me on, I say, “May I see my boarding pass?”
She gets this flare in her eyes and lectures me on how she can’t even THINK of addressing the problem until there is definite ID and my name plastered all over the information in her hand does not count and it is a MATTER OF LAW. . . and I think how she’d probably feel ill-served if I knocked her jaw into the back of her skull. But, when she has her say, she begins typing. She says, “Lufthansa has control of your ticket.”
“Ominous,” I say. She types some more.
“There are no seats left.”
I know by this that she means no seats except those that are kept open for airline employees who may want a free ride to Asheville, and I say, with a tone which I congratulate myself on being deathly calm “I will be on that flight.”
She types some more. She hands me the boarding pass. I get back on the train and go to Terminal 2. At security they are out of tubs to put your stuff in. The security people are mad at us for that, which I can’t quite figure out. By now I’m in a state of advanced hysteria, and laugh at everything. This turns out to be a good thing, and lightens everybody’s mood. The tubs come. I’m drawn aside and extra searched because the lymphadema in my legs has convinced the man I’m wearing fake braces concealing some deadly device. He pokes my swollen legs several times, trying to convince himself they’re organic.
He says, “I don’t know–“
I say, “Call your supervisor, now.”
He waves me through.
Got drunk at a terminal bar with some gladsome people from Appleton, Wisconsin, and then they called my flight. I expected some snafu at the door, but the evening was over.

Except one final twist: Daylight Savings Time, which meant DJ was driving me home down I-26 at midnight.

Quiet homecoming. It was Titus who made a big deal of missing me, and rubbed against my legs the first few hours I came home, refusing to be parted.