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My oh my what a miserable day!
So ... I am at the Birmingham Air Terminal (this word is totally freaking me out) in plenty of time to pass the are-you-a-terrorist-or- are-you-not-a-terrorist test one more time. I always wonder to myself while passing through the multi-billion dollar terrorist detection devices if I am one. Only the machines know for sure.
I checked the departures board and it said my flight was scheduled to depart on time. I whispered, "thank you, Lord," and gave the sign of the cross. I am Baptist, but I have always felt the sign of the cross was a powerful secret weapon the Catholics utilized. All is fair on our individual journeys to kingdom come, so I just sort of borrow it from the Catholics for special occasions ... like getting back to Tallahassee. Note I did not say on time, just getting back would exceed my expectations.
With time to spare, I went to the room marked MEN and discovered to my horror and surprise, that my zipper broke and I was feeling a breeze coming through the front door of my rode hard khakis and there was no way to close it. I was holding the zipper thingy in my hand and there was no way I could reattach it. It would take a surgeon.
Duct tape came to mind. Nope ... didn't have any. How about a change of pants? Nope check my bag in and it was probably on its way to Bombay (If our bags could just get us frequent flier miles I would have enough to go to the moon for free). So, I held a Business Week magazine in front of me and headed for the news stand to see if they had some safety pins.
"Yep," said the lady from India. Wow, maybe my bags in Birmingham and somehow I ended up in Bombay, I thought. She sold me a sewing kit made in China for $2.17. I rushed to the Men's room, opened up the kit and there were ... no make that was one lousy safety pin that probably had Chinese lead paint all over it. The scissors lay in two pieces. They were either broken or a scissors' kit. I will never know because I tossed the whole sewing kit in the trash. I kept the highly toxic safety pin (kind of an oxymoron), bought another sewing kit for $2.17 and headed for the Men's room, again, to use the two safety pins to provide a temporary solution to my broken zipper challenge.
After waiting outside the Men's room for about five minutes for the cleaning lady (yep, you read it right) to complete her chores, I was able to exchange the Business Week for two safety pins. For $4.34 and 45 minutes of my time, I had shut the breeze way on my pants.
I ran as fast as I could to the gate and the Delta rep that was now announcing, "last call." Using my Business Week just to be safe, I made it to my seat humming, zip-a-dee-do-dah, zip-a-dee-aye.
The flight attendant who recognized the tune said, "you must be having a 'wonderful day'."
I chimed in with, "plenty of sunshine headed my way!" Then I looked down to check out the position of my Business Week. No sunshine peeking through. Maybe it would be a zip-a-dee-aye wonderful day after all.
