Why Can’t I Quit You? (Southwest Airlines edition)
Sometimes I like to freak out hard in front of my family, just to remind them who they are dealing with. Being the only girl in the house I feel entitled to melting down when the boys are being especially boy-ish.
Over the summer this came in the form of me de-boarding a plane brimming with people with absolutely no advance notice after a vacation with my in-laws in Florida.
I had spent a substantial amount of time planning out this Florida vacation for AJ’s parents, his sister and her husband, as well as their two kids and the three of us. Normally, they all go to the family lake house near the Ozarks for vacation, but I have refused to go back there in almost 10 years after a legendary trip where I was not able to flush my toilet paper due to a plumbing issue (that had been going on for 30 years), and had to sleep on the floor using couch cushions. I started crying in the middle of the night because my back hurt and I was afraid that snakes were going to enter the house and wrap around my neck while I slept. And no one even noticed my cries! I decided no one there truly cared about me and I have carried a grudge ever since. So I put together an elaborate PowerPoint presentation with a convincing argument as to why we should vacation at a luxury home in Florida rather than the old-standby cabin. These points included: a need to bond after a year mostly apart, an uptick in finances after a year of doing nothing, and the children were a perfect age to form lasting bonds.
And I won.
We had an idyllic trip with beaches, fishing in the canal and playing in the luxury pool. But traveling home SJ was in full teenager mode/mood. Everything I did was annoying and embarrassing to him. And all of the delays we experienced in travel were exclusively my fault. Not a labor shortage or a surplus of people hyped to travel after 18 months in lockdown. Me. Only me. I mean, forget that I had booked and planned the entire trip myself, as well as his father and I coughing up vacation-inflated amounts of money to ensure that he was enjoying his SECOND large-scale vacation of the summer.
But no, he whined and rolled his eyes and sighed heavily the whole day of our departure. I reinforced my position that he needed to show some respect and stop being a butt wipe to me.
After boarding our Southwest Airlines flight and securing our seats (we prefer row 22) the rest of the passengers filed in. This is the most stressful part of flying Southwest for me. I am not a nervous flyer, but my pre-flight ritual includes a Xanax, noise canceling headphones and an eye mask. This is not out of fear of the plane going down. I would much prefer to die in a plane crash than, say, of heart disease, which is the statistically probable cause of my death. Nope, I have to pretend to be blind and deaf because the lack of efficiency and ineptitude of the other passengers boarding the plane gets me all worked up.
Below is a list of things I have wanted to yell at people boarding a Southwest flight:
Why are you bringing balloons on the plane? This is not a proper souvenir or an acceptable carry on.
You are in boarding group C and attempting to put a full-size suitcase in a (already full) storage compartment 16 aisles back from your seat. Check the bag and get on with your life.
Your kid sucks. Probably because you suck as a parent. Like, you are acting surprised that your kid is being a butt wipe after I watched her chug a Mountain Dew at the gate before boarding.
No one wants to smell your fast food on this flight. Find something to eat that doesn’t smell like old BO.
You have been over served at the airport bar and have now strategically placed yourself next to the (under age) girls volleyball team on this flight. Gross. The feds should know about you.
So, on this particular flight where I completely lost my shit and abandoned my family without warning, we had begun in Ft. Myers, Florida, a few hours earlier. After our 45 minute flight landed in Orlando before the final leg of the trip home to Kansas City, SJ became progressively more crappy to me. I elected to sit by myself in the holding area of the Orlando airport, careful to make sure the boys could see me pouting, but not so close that they would actually talk to me. Sulking is a real balancing act.
They left me alone. Probably because they knew I was holding my Xanax for closer to the flight, so they knew they were dealing with a real live-wire situation. We have A+ Super Preferred Rock Star Southwest status from AJ’s years of extensive work travel. (I recently learned he could have been booking other airlines, but elected to fly Southwest in an effort to save the company money. Fudge. That. He is a better person than I.) So we board the plane first, which sounds ideal, unless you are a person who needs all of her senses dulled in order to board a plane without shouting at passers by and the elderly. They all came marching in: Mickey Mouse balloon guy, someone with a guitar as a carry on, lady with a fake Louis Vuitton bag who is demanding free snacks for her kids immediately, and the remnants of a traveling sports team (who have spent the equivalent of a semester of college tuition on this trip alone attempting to get a scholarship that won’t ever cover what they spent trying to attain said scholarship).
They just kept boarding. And boarding. My Xanax was not entering my blood stream fast enough. Probably 30 minutes passed and things seemed more chaotic than necessary. In the row directly in front of us, a woman did not have a seat with her family that she said she paid for. The noise cancelling headphones are fit to drown out the sound of jet engines, but not a woman who had just purchased her ticket the night before on an over-booked flight. This woman with poor planning skills is becoming increasingly louder. And I am becoming increasingly irritable. SJ is gazing out the window, acting like his life is over because he does not have another major vacation on his horizon.
Then an announcement is made overhead.
“We are offering a $1,200 voucher to any person willing to de-board the flight in exchange for a flight later in the day,” the overworked and under-appreciated flight attendant pleaded.
I turned to AJ.
“I’m doing it.”
He nodded. Because after 16 years of marriage, he knows I’m prone to becoming unhinged and it is best to just let me unravel on my own without interfering. Kind of like me whimpering in the dark while lying on couch cushions in the living room of the family cabin. If he had indulged me that night, I would have demanded that we pack the car and leave in the dark so the family could get a sense of how traumatized I was by the circumstances of the weekend. Instead he ignored my muffled cries and kept his eyes shut tight.
I grabbed my Kate Spade luggage from underneath the seat in front of me, rang my “assistance” bell and stood up. I glanced at my family and said, “I’m doing it. See you in Kansas.”
Then I sauntered down the aisle, grinning at the families with whining kids who were over-tired from days at Disney and the super old people who are always flying in and out of Florida. I made my way to the ticket counter where the attendant printed out my $1,200 in Southwest vouchers, making it take all the longer to break up with Southwest Airlines for good.
I spent the next 7 hours waiting for my flight watching Gilmore Girls on my iPad with my luggage wrapped around my waist (so no one could plant a bomb in it) while I dozed off my Xanax.
As soon as my original flight with SJ and AJ landed, SJ peppered me with messages wondering how I was doing and what time I would be home. This kid was genuinely concerned that his mother had just abandoned him on a cross-country flight with no warning after he was acting like a massive asshole. He told me he and his dad had gotten the house back in order after the trip. Poor SJ even told me that he would wait up for me to make sure I got home ok…no matter how late it was.
After 7 hours I boarded my makeup flight back to KC. I sat in the front to combat my airborne claustrophobia and to get off the plane quickly to grab an Uber back home to my family who was so concerned about me abandoning them.
After the plane landed I texted my mom and AJ to let them know that my Uber driver wasn’t giving off “murder vibes” despite picking me up from the airport at 1:00 am. No one responded. Not even my mom. Total diss.
As my non-murdery Uber driver dropped me off in the street in front of my house, I noticed the TV was not on, which seemed odd if my oh-so-concerned family was waiting for me. I turned the knob of the front door. Locked. So I entered the garage door code. The battery was nearly dead so it took me three tries. “Oh, they must be so worried that I am just now getting home at 2:00 am. What a martyr I am in the name of $1,200 worth of Southwest vouchers!”
Asleep. They were both asleep. Not even sorta worried about me being held at knifepoint by the Kansas River by my Uber driver or a sex trafficker who hangs out at the airport. They were full on snoring and oblivious to the potential danger I had put myself in.
The next morning SJ got in bed next to me while I was still asleep.
“I had a really good time in Florida. I hope we go back soon,” he whispered.
“Well I have all these vouchers now,” I replied.
