Travel Trials and Tribulations, Part Two

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Something o’clock PM – my computer says 7:15 EST although I am somewhere over Kansas or Minnesota or something, so what I do know?

Well, I am currently at 37,000 feet on my way back from Denver. I am slightly less substance-ically enhanced than on the way out, although not much – still slammed the Klonopin (half a pill on the Avis shuttle bus as I was freaking out and sweating bullets for no conceivable reason) and a whole pill as soon as I was seated in beautiful aisle seat 3C, thank you Northwest for yet another upgrade.

First class is so amusing to me, because nine times out of ten, or, you know, approximately 75% of the time, I am the only woman seated here. I am also generally the only person under 35. I am typing this in a word doc right now only because it seems that out of the 15 other all-male all-middle aged passengers around me, I was the only one doing something so clearly uncorporate and un-first-class-deserving as reading People magazine. I at least should be reading BusinessWeek or Wired or something, just for appearances’ sake.

Although on the way down, I got into a great conversation with a gentleman who was at least 60 years old about the newest Harry Potter, which he was toting around in all its purple-hardcover glory along with his laptop. I refrained from expounding on my snogging theories and no, I did not ruin the ending for him.

So I figured I better bust out the laptop and at least pretend to be doing something useful, although I have the little animated Word “assistant” enabled as the puppy dog so every time I use spell check or hit save, the little puppy barks at me. I am DEFINITELY surrounded by those whose Word assistant would be the innocuous, boring paper clip thingy. That is just the kind of world that first class is.

I had a delightful and kind of frightening Mommy moment as I was seated waiting for my ohmygodweareabouttotaxiandImightdie panic to ensue and the poor schlubs in coach class were still boarding. A rather frazzled looking mom (like there’s any other kind, especially when traveling with kids) carrying a toddler with wonderfully unruly boinging, bouncing curls paused next to my seat as the morons in front of her in line tried their best to cram their grand piano-sized carry-on bags into spaces that would barely fit a pair of rolled up socks. Anyway, I waved at this little girl as I am inexplicably now drawn to doing – for the record, I was NOT an awwww, cute baby!!-waver in the past. I still don’t wave at ugly babies.

This little girl giggled and her mom prodded her with, “say ‘hi,’ sweetie” – and the little girl pointed right at me and said, loudly and proudly, “MOMMY!”

Considering Molly’s only discernible words are DADA which she yells with joyful abandon every 5 seconds when Dan is in the room (and every 10 seconds when he’s not) and something that resembles dog – more like “daaaaaaawg” – yes, we are raising a little gangsta in training – I almost burst into tears to hear something of the child-like variety refer to me as Mommy. Her own mom laughed and said “yep, I bet she is a mommy” as they kept walking.

Wow. I have actually become a recognizable Mommy, even if it’s just a vibe that little kiddos pick up on. Who knows. But it was darn cool and the best pick up line I’ve heard in a long time.