Story of the Day 7/ 19/ 2012 #1

The cell phones woke me.
Phones.

After yesterday's smooth leg of our trip, I set my phone alarm, and Sarah's phone alarm and slept with them. On the bed. Next to me, but not actually tied to my body.
I must still have been feeling optimistic.

And I was up and dressed by the time the desk clerk called with the wake-up call.
This was my back-up plan, because, after yesterday, I figured I needed as many back-up plans as possible, and maybe some 4-leaf clovers and a few rabbit's feet. And my neurotic plans turned out to be a good thing, since his call was just late enough that we might not have made it out of the hotel on time.
But at least he remembered.

I figured this was a good sign.
Of course, by now I was rather desperate for anything that I could possibly interpret as a good sign.

Sarah and I shoved our things back into our bags.
By now our things included some rather smelly clothes from yesterday's adventures; and I left a small tip for whomever cleaned the room .
We hauled our butts down to the lobby.
But not before calling the car service. The one that had picked us up from the airport, yesterday, in the black Lincoln town car that was disguised as a blue van.

We checked out and waited by the curb, and , lo and behold, a car that had been black and might have once been a Lincoln town car arrived to take us to the airport.
The air-conditioning didn't work, which wasn't a big deal, since it hadn't yet gotten up to 85, yet; but it wouldn't have mattered, anyhow, since the windows were all broken in the mostly down position, giving us a very effective cooling, on the way to the airport and , thankfully, diverting some of the driver's cigarette smoke to the outside of the car.

She ( the chain smoking driver) dropped us off at the departures area for Delta and we got in line.
And it was quite a line.

When we got into it there must have been at least 400 people in it.
The line wrapped around and around and back and forth and this was only 6:45 AM.
Of course, the line was also swollen out of proportion by the scads of people who were praying to get on with standby tickets from yesterday's cancelled flights.

By the time we worked our way to the front of that part of the line- the part where you show your ticket and your picture ID, not the part where you have your shoes, belt buckle and bags X-rayed and your shampoo measured, weighed and analyzed to make sure the bottle is not over 3 ounces ( and to make sure that you did not commit the cardinal sin of using a gallon bag instead of a quart plastic bag to zip it up in....) well, I can't say it was getting late, because, to be honest, they kept us moving at a decent rate.
Or, at least, the line kept moving at a decent rate, until they got to us.

Our normal protocol ( and, yes, I hesitate to use a pronoun for people in my family in conjunction with the adjective " normal") when going through lines is that I shove Sarah in front of me.
She goes first.
This is because if I go first I am done and gone and she is still standing there waiting for me to interpret for her.
Oddly, this doesn't' work very well.

So, she goes in front of me and hands her boarding pass and her driver's license ( the learner's permit variety) to the man. He looks at the pass and her license and says, "Your name?'
I have added a question mark, but his voice didn't really denote a question.
On the one hand, this seems rather lazy, but, on the other hand, he had been saying those two words over and over to the 400 plus people in front of us...and those were the ones that hadn't gone through the line before we had arrived at the airport.

I signed his question to Sarah and she fingerspelled 'S-A-R-A-H" and I voiced it for her.

"What's that?"
Came the slightly perturbed voice of the man who was still looking at his papers.

I signed his response to Sarah , who replied back to him, "What's that?"
with a slightly different inflection, which I tried to convey as I voiced it for her.

"What's that?"
His voice now had some emotion to it, and was ...confused, at least a little bit.

I conveyed this to Sarah, who again responded, "What's that?"

The man, still not looking up, and with maybe some added irritation in his voice said, What's that?"

To which again, Sarah replied, and I voiced for her, "What's that?" Although, Sarah's response , at this point, was rather relaxed.
She is used to dealing with the intellectually disadvantaged.

Again, the man asks, "What's that?"
I am getting a bit tired of signing the same thing over and over, but I do. That is, after all, my job.

And again....I voice the same reply for Sarah.

This time, he asks his question, and is more than bit perturbed.
And while Sarah is replying with her same calm "What's that?" he looks up.
He catches her signing it and my voicing for her.
And he freezes.

For a moment.

Then his shoulders go back,his eyes go wide in a very uncomfortable way, and he tentatively hands Sarah's boarding pass and ID back to her, looking as if he has realized he is dealing with a rather large and trainer-less grizzly bear.

Sarah and I walk past him and to the next line where we will have our shoes, bags, and hearing aids xrayed.