“Florida
2016”
2/5/16, “The
Perfect Storm”
Aboard DL
2065, En route LGA-PBI
Today marks
two very important chronological features.
61 years ago today my mother was born, which is the reason I am flying
to Florida today. 6 months from today is
Opening Ceremonies of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio, which triggers
certain changes in the consumer products I will purchase, in an attempt to
support the Olympic Sponsors. The Super
Bowl is in two days. All of this leads
to a perfect storm.
See, reader, while
Coca-Cola is the sponsor of the Olympics, Pepsi-Cola is the sponsor of the
NFL. Surely my reader will agree
that I could not in good faith drink Coca-Cola products during the Super Bowl,
yes? Now, my reader should understand
that, once that 6-month window begins, I will not purchase products from direct
competitors of the Olympic Sponsors, nor will I consume products that have been
purchased after the 6-month window began.
The 6-month window would begin approximately 50 hours before the Super
Bowl. What then would I drink during the
Super Bowl?
Fortunately unopened soda
bottles stay good for more than 50 hours after purchase, and the solution was
simple. My mother, in Florida, would
purchase three bottles of Pepsi-Cola products for us to drink during the Super
Bowl. She would have to purchase it
before the 6-month window began. I
looked up when the Opening Ceremony would begin and did the time zone conversion. She would need to purchase the soda by 5 PM
today. I sent her an email to that
effect yesterday morning. She would buy
two bottles of caffeinated diet soda and one bottle of caffeine free. There would be plenty of soda for all of us
to drink during the game. It was going
to be perfect. I had found a solution
to this quagmire.
When I left for the
airport around 4:30 PM today, I attempted to call my parents to confirm the
soda had been purchased. Neither of them
picked up. I emailed my mother, asking
her to confirm that she had purchased the soda by 6 PM [sic]. No response.
My flight was at 6:36 PM. I had
eaten lunch (not my traditional pre-departure Hop Won) around 2 PM, and I left
work a little after 4 PM, after a very stressful day of rushing to meet a bunch
of deadlines that all came together at the last minute. There were multiple items that needed to go
out today, all of which I was unable to prepare prior to today. It was the perfect storm.
I got almost everything out that needed to go
out, but the regular day-to-day stuff had to suffer, putting me a full day
behind on my every day stuff. I was in a
very high stress state for almost the entire day. I was relieved to finally leave the office in
time to finish my cigar before I had to catch a taxi to the airport. It was 5 PM by the time I got to the
airport. The flight was at 6:36 PM. I figured I’d breeze through security, get
something to eat, finish up some work stuff that I had to put aside, and have
plenty of time to make my flight.
Right?
Wrong! The line for security was atrocious, and my
Delta Silver status apparently is not enough to use the Priority Lane. You need to be Delta Gold. The line would take close to an hour I
figured. It would be enough to make my
flight, I hoped, but not enough time to get something to eat. I was starving. I got the call from my father, saying they
were at Publix getting the soda. Okay,
fine. It was last minute, but it would
be purchased in time, or so I thought.
My mother then asked if I wanted her to pick up Burger King. I explained that it was subject to the same
embargo as the Pepsi-Cola products. If
she could purchase it by 6 PM, I could eat it later. I emailed her my order.
Something didn’t seem right. Was 6 PM really the deadline? I checked the initial email. It said 5 PM.
Was I wrong then, or was I wrong now?
The deadline was, in fact, 5 PM, with time zone differences and
everything. I called my mother
back. Reader, have you been following
along? Have you been paying attention to
all the details and timelines?
Okay. I let her know that the
deadline was 5 PM and it had already passed and that she should not buy the
soda or get the Burger King.
What did
she say? Did she apologize for messing
up? Did she acknowledge her
mistake? No. Instead she blamed me. She responded, “But you said it was 6
PM.” Reader, there was no way that was
possible. Recall that my email was sent
after 4:30 PM, asking her to CONFIRM that she had purchased the soda. She did not even acknowledge that email until
after 5 PM. If I had never sent that
email, she would have still purchased the soda after 5 PM, and it would have
been too late to avoid the embargo. It
was not as if I sent the email at noon, and she emailed me immediately afterwards,
saying, “Okay, I’ll go later this afternoon.”
She was already in the store, past 5 PM, when she saw the email. Yet, she tried to blame me for it.
I was furious. I was furious about that. I was furious about having to wait in the
long line at security. I was
starving. It was the perfect storm. There was only one solution to this problem,
and it was not a good one. There is one
beverage company that is a sponsor of both the US Olympic Committee and the
NFL: Budweiser. Now, beer and football go
together very well. However, I do not
want to spend an entire football game drinking nothing but Budweiser. I would have liked to have been able to have
a soft drink during the game. That was
rendered impossible. I was not
particularly angry at my mother for screwing up, that happens all the time. I was angry at her for not being sympathetic
to my plight, for trying to blame me for it, for refusing to take responsibility
for her mistake.
My father asked if
there was any flexibility. There was
none. This was the only loophole, and it
was no longer available due to my mother’s mistake. My mother told me to “move on,” which was
just about the worst thing she could have said. She has known me for 28 years, been with me
for eight Olympic cycles now. She knows
how I get about the Olympics. She knows
my rules. She knows how inflexible I am
about them. She knows that I cannot just
“move on.” (Would that it were so
simple.) She said the exact wrong thing
to say.
I had cleared security, but I
had lost my appetite, I was that infuriated about this. I figured I would regain my appetite by the
time I got to my gate, but there were no fast options for food. That was ridiculous. This is an airport, and yet they focus on
food places that have to cook individual orders. I had no time for that. I knew that only food could lighten my
spirits, and I resigned myself to not being able to eat for another hour. It was the perfect storm.
When I finally got on the plane, things
started to get better, for a while, at least.
I had gotten an exit row seat, and the middle seat was empty. Perf.
I was able to put both my bags up top, too. Perf.
Finally, the beverage service came.
They only had snack boxes. No
sandwiches, no wraps. This was not
dinner. This was a snack. Fortunately, it was better than the cookies
and goldfish I was forced to eat for dinner last time en route to Cancun. However, last time, I was in a very chatty
mood to befriend my seatmate. Today, I
was just infuriated about the soda incident and in no mood to talk to
anyone. I got the usual snack box I get,
along with Pringles and Coke Zero.
The
highlight of the snack box is the cheese spread and salami slices, which I put
on the crackers. There were 14 salami
slices, so I painstakingly made 7 tiny sandwiches (intending to make 7 more
later). As I ate them, my spirits
started to lift. Then, a slight
jerk. Two of the fell on the floor. Back to being mopey. By the time I finished the rest of them
(along with the other 7), my spirits were back to a neutral state. I got my cord to charge my phone and sat back
down in my seat, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now
close.
West Palm
Beach, Florida
Reader,
recall that about finding the familiar within the unfamiliar and experiencing
the unfamiliar within the familiar? It
was back the moment I stepped outside at PBI Airport. I had probably arrived at the airport more
times in my life than I had at any other airport outside of the New York
area. All the times I flew down to visit
my grandmother for Passover. However,
lately, I have been opting to fly into MIA or FLL for these trips due to
convenience with international options and car rental. It had been quite some time since I was at
PBI, but it all came rushing back to me the moment I set foot outside. It was familiar once more.
My parents were circling and would soon be back
around. However, not having seen them in
six weeks now, that was almost unfamiliar.
Dare I say I even missed them?
Let’s not go that far, but it was certainly weird seeing them for the
first time in six weeks. It was, I’m
pretty sure, the longest we had ever gone without seeing each other. We talked about this month’s big three topics
as we drove: Primaries, Oscars, and the Super Bowl. I’m rooting for Trump, Brooklyn, and the
Broncos. We stopped at McDonald’s for
some food. Desperately craving some
solid protein, I opted for a double cheeseburger, along with some other
stuff.
My dad asked if I had the Oscars
figured out. I effortlessly rattled out
my Oscar predictions. I have every
category memorized, each frontrunner and most second-place contenders, as
well. We got to their condominium
complex, and I was shocked how friendly everyone was in the elevator,
exchanging greetings with them. When we
got off at their floor, I asked if they knew all of their neighbors. They said they didn’t know any of them. I was shocked! Why were they exchanging friendly greetings
then? I have lived in the same building
for close to a decade now, and I do not know a single one of my neighbors. The closest I ever come to exchanging
greetings is a noncommittal nod or thanks as we hold the front door for each
other and a grunt as we make room to pass each other by the stairwell. That’s the way I like it. I questioned the sanity of the inhabitants of
this building. My parents said it’s not
the building, it’s anywhere outside of New York. I love New York.
When we got to their unit, we started to get settled
in, and I got an odd email. It was a
notification of a Facebook message from an old elementary school friend, my
Fifth Grade crush, someone I haven’t spoken with quite possibly since Middle
School. What was up with that? She had messaged me about 20 minutes earlier,
but we were so disconnected, that the notification didn’t push through right
away. She had seen me at the PBI Airport,
or so she thought. It had been over a
decade, so she wasn’t sure if she recognized me. Talk about the unfamiliar within the
familiar. I messaged her back to confirm
that I had been there, and we exchanged a couple of messages throughout the
night.
Then my brother and sister-in-law
called, and we chatted with them for a while.
She spilled the beans on my trip to Machu Picchu next weekend. I feigned umbrage, that she ruined the
surprise, but my parents would have seen anyway when I closed out my Travelogue
with “Next Stop: Peru.” My mother soon
went to bed, and I chatted with my father for another hour or so about the
upcoming primaries.
He then went to bed,
and I rested my eyes for about an hour before lighting up my Ardor and coming
out to the balcony, where I proceeded to write this entry. This whole thing was almost like a Seinfeld
episode, I thought, and I wondered if this unfamiliar way of experiencing the
familiar was to be my future, imaging my parents, like Jerry’s parents, moving
to Florida and us only seeing each other when we flew back and forth between
New York and Florida. It was an odd
thought. On that note, I close.
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