it took all i had to restrain myself and not pull any pranks on the sacred holiday known as april fool's day. being a gunnison by birth i have an overabundance of enthusiasm when it comes to anything even slightly resembling a holiday or theme. why then, you ask, did i hold back on this particular day of fools? me, the one whose foot was lodged firmly in my little mouth at birth, causing some odd looks from the doctors and nurses. it was probably the only time in my life that the verbal diarrhea wasn't flowing from my mouth like montezuma's revenge. my sister sarah is likeliest to blame, or perhaps the terrorists. anyhow, whomever is to blame, i was in an airport on april 1st and unfortunately had to restrain myself if i wanted to arrive on time to my youngest sister's wedding.
but the return flight, now that was a different story.
the ride to the oakland airport was typical of 'a day in the life of me.' my best friend lisa missed the exit due to my incessant rambling and geographical retardation. we somehow ended up on a bridge going to treasure island, the place where i returned my favorite brother when he went AWOL from the navy to compete in a surf contest in santa cruz. the hour plus cushion we had was quickly deflating. my brilliant daughter yelled from the backseat to flip a bitch on the bridge. i screamed YES and lisa, the always cautious driver, slammed on the brakes so i could jump out of the car on the bridge, run barefooted and braless through the pissed off commuters to move the orange cones.
needless to say we ran sweaty and stressed to the southwest check-in line with only minutes till takeoff. chloe and i looked at each other with fear in our eyes. the line was insane, snaking around back and forth like the line for space-fucking mountain at disney land. i tried to breathe deeply and told her i'd watch our fifty seven bags while she used her cuteness and youngness to go have a talk with the guy standing at a desk labeled "special services."
as i expected, she returned smiling and said our plane had been delayed by twenty minutes.
"he said we'll totally make it." she said, giving me the thumbs up. i don't doubt at all that she caused the delay.
after sucking up fifteen of our extra twenty minutes in the heinous line we finally arrived at the counter. we heaved our heavy bags up on the scale and flirted with the check in dude so he wouldn't notice that they were far over the 50 pound limit. since my other sister leslie is moving out of her house of sadness we had an extra box stuffed with clothes she had given to chloe and i. earlier, i had asked lisa to duct tape it for us before we left her house and had failed to notice that my devious friend had taken it upon herself to do a little decorating. i watched the check in dude's eyes go wide as he bent down to take a closer look. i heard my daughter start to laugh and i looked down at the box that was covered with penises. lots of penises. in bright red sharpie were big ones, bent ones, circumcised and uncircumcised ones. big hairy balls bounced all around and one little sentence was written on the bottom of the box. it said, "i'm a proud republican!" i looked up at the guy to see if our box was going to be confiscated. i guessed not as he was laughing so hard he was about to cry and he called out to other employees to come and have a look. a small, sweet looking asian woman in her crisp blue and white airline uniform came over. she looked down and squealed, covered her mouth with her hands and ran away. "oh she loves it," said check in guy, "she's a nasty one." i noticed that he was wearing pajamas and he told us it was pajama day at southwest. of course it was. he called someone else over, a dark black woman in bright pink jammies decorated with teddy bears and bunnies. "lord-a-mercy!" she said, licking her luscious lips, "ima sit on dat." we discussed exactly which ones we would prefer to sit on and my daughter snapped a few pictures to send lisa. we glanced back at the growing line of scowling passengers who just might miss their flight due to lisa's antics. but we were having a blast.
"i hope we're not holding you up." i said to check in guy. he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and caught his breath. he looked at chloe and i like we were handing him the winning lottery ticket. "this has been the worst day ever." he said. "the monday after easter is always a nightmare, everyone is pissy and hungover after spending obligatory time with their families." More employees filed past to enjoy the box they heard they absolutely must see. "this is the best thing that's happened to us all day, maybe even all year."
chloe and i felt our hearts growing inside our chests like the grinch after deciding to return the presents and roast beast to the whos down in who-ville. "thank you," he said, "now RUN to your gate or you're gonna miss your plane." we held hands and ran like the wind. in slow motion we arrived at our gate where the entire plane was waiting for us. the captain himself greeted us by name. "good job girls," he said, "it's about time we had a little humor around here."
(i must give at least 95% of the credit to my lovely lisa for making this story possible. the other 5% will be split between my daughter and i who weren't too embarrassed to follow through.)
