Greta and I are old college friends who hadn’t seen each other in 17 years, and we arranged to meet at JFK Airport during a layover. I left my husband guarding all our carry-on stuff–and my Kaffe Fassett coat, to top it off, more than any one person should have to carry–while I went out of the security zone to have a chance to catch up with my old friend. I carefully kept my ID and boarding pass with me, taking only my purse. I promised him I’d be checking back through in time to spend the last full hour with him so he could go buy lunch, take a restroom break if he needed it, etc etc.
All well and good, till… I got a not-quite-frantic-yet IM message from Richard: they’d just changed our departure time to 45 minutes earlier, ie boarding quite shortly, and they’d changed our gate to one further away. He’d had to move everything, and I needed to hurry NOW. Oh goodness! How can they do that! Gotta run! Greta waved goodbye as I tried to go back through security.
The boarding pass had been in two pieces barely connected. Somehow between stuffing it in my purse and then stuffing it in my pocket for handy grabbing, I’d lost the top half. No good. Can’t let you through, so sorry, lady, no the flight won’t wait even if your luggage is on it, sorry. I got sent way over to the luggage check-in to get a new boarding pass (they let me go to the front of the line–thank you JetBlue.) Then back to security. Everything was far enough away that I was running. Which gets too dramatic, with me suddenly in acute need of air and my heart not happy about it. They grabbed me a wheelchair.
The wheelchair lady was in absolutely no hurry. She’d seen the original boarding time and couldn’t understand my hurry, and nothing I could do could talk her out of it. I tried to take a deep breath. In the end, I got there with just a couple of minutes to spare, but it was just too close.
And then the flight was so turbulent there were no snacks nor bathroom breaks allowed.
Richard forgave me, but it was a near thing for a few minutes there.
But I did get my Greta time. Yay! Was it worth it? You absolutely betcha.
Note which spouse is typing this.