Two days ago, I missed a flight for the first time in my life. I got up at 5 am at my hotel in Anaheim, made it to LAX at 7:30 am for my 9:00 am flight, and sat twenty feet away from the airline counter the entire time. And I managed to miss my flight.
Because? Because some guy -- this green-eyed demigod of a man -- sat himself next to me and asked me who I was and what I did and what kinds of dreams I had for the future. I am not even exaggerating that last bit. He laughed at every lame joke, refuted every self-deprecating comment, leaned forward at every nervous giggle. He seemed so absolutely engrossed with every little word coming out of my mouth, and what girl can resist that kind of attention? What girl wouldn't lose track of time, lose all sense of 200 of her fellow passengers boarding the plane around her, and miss her name being called on the loudspeaker three times?
I missed my flight with the damn boarding gate in my peripheral vision for the full hour and a half that I, a sensible woman, had made sure to set aside in order not to miss my flight. The words "Ms. dela Cruz, your plane left ten minutes ago" is still ringing in my ears. My response, "I refuse to be on stand-by!" is ringing even louder.
As I slumped back to my seat, my swain was reluctantly gathering his stuff; his own flight to San Francisco was starting to board.
"May I call you sometime?" he asked me timidly.
"No, you can't call me sometime!" I shot at him. "Do you realize your incessant babbling just caused me to miss my flight?"
He blinked and shuffled his feet for a few seconds, apologized for the trouble he had caused me, and offered to miss his flight too. At that point, I gave him my number, and urged him to run for his gate.
As I armed myself for the hours and hours I was told I would have to wait for a stand-by seat back to the Bay Area, I ended up having to face the reproving stare of a stuffed fish that my friend Steve had won for me at Disneyland the day before.
"Listen, Fish," I told it sternly. "I don't need this from you, okay? You'd miss your flight too if the most beautiful man on earth suddenly appeared in the middle of this pisspot of an airport and asked you about your dreams."
Fish kept staring at me, so I stuffed it deeper into my bag, all the while reprimanding my own self. Still, I couldn't help but feel a little lovely. Here was this guy who just met me, who managed to make me forget about that smelly airport for an hour and a half, who offered to miss his own flight to keep me company, and who still wanted to call me even after learning of my particularly endearing propensity to blame my lunacy on the nearest man.
Sometimes I think, "Maybe, subconsciously, I invite these types of situations into my life because I like having stories like this to tell to people. Being this colorful has got to take some personal effort."
Or maybe, maybe my brain really is the size of a pea.
N.B. I only ended up waiting about an hour to catch the next flight out of that hellhole.
