Family Upgrade

My co-worker/boss and I returned from our conference yesterday and we had quite the charmed travel day.

First, before we went to the airport, we were able to go on a beautiful, leisurely stroll through the woods with one of my co-worker's former classmates and his family. Beautiful fall colors, tromping on beds of leaves, temps in the high 70s. Just the ticket after three days indoors.

Our travels home necessitated three flights. Our first flight was on a small jet with just four seats across and no room in the overhead bins for any carry-on larger than a briefcase.

Just before the doors are closed, a drunk, loud, Southern, retirement aged couple boarded with way too many carry-ons and sat down directly behind me. Sensing trouble, I popped up immediately and dig my iPod out of my briefcase in the overhead bin.

I settled in, turned on KT Tunstall, then Snow Patrol, then Jack Johnson for the duration of the flight, ignoring the overhead announcements about not using portable electronic devices during take-off and landing. I mean, we're talking my sanity here, folks.

The wife proceeded to regale the entire flight with her opinions on a variety of political and religious topics, including her views on same sex marriage. I blissfully missed most of it but was chagrined to find out that she would be on our next flight also.

As my co-worker was waiting in line at Starbucks during our first layover, she was on her cellphone telling her mom all about the previous flight. The gay gate agent for our next flight overheard, misunderstood several things, including my co-worker's and my relationship and, in solidarity, proceeded to offer us the "family upgrade" to the sweetest available seats on the flight, our longest of the day.

I don't even know the secret handshake . . .

We never saw the loud, drunk, Southern woman again.

Since we were in the front of the plane, we were among the first to deplane. We had a two hour layover but as we checked the monitors, we learned that there was a flight to our destination, boarding at that moment at the other end of the terminal.

We took off running.

Doing the OJ thing through the airport (I later had to explain to my 14 year old what the OJ thing is), we leapfrogged each other to the gate, arriving just in time (and I mean just!) to make the flight.

So, we arrived home two hours early, to the beginnings of a snowstorm which may or may not have cancelled our scheduled flight, after having been pampered in Business Class, all because of the loud Southern woman whose political views, ironically, were actually extremely Blue State.

Solidarity, Sister!!