Returning Home, Part II

As you may know, the flight from Little Rock to Memphis is pretty short - about 40 minutes. By the way, dear reader, if you do not know this, you must be stupid and should immediately stop at your nearest gas station, buy a map, and look at how close the two cities are. Or you are Scandinavian and know little if anything about our country. But I digress...

Dean the flight attendant was quite exasperated by the time the wheels were up and we were 20 feet in the air, and almost immediately began teetering down the aisle with a two liter of water and plastic cups. Not asking or really even speaking at all, Dean fills the cups and shoves it at each passenger. When everyone has their mandatory water without ice, Dean totters back up the aisle, and literally rips into a Sam's-size box of individually wrapped cookies, which he proceeds to throw into each passenger's lap, tray table down or not. Dean is really earning his wings today. He's barely through shoving the cookie packages he has left into the steel-trap-looking-contraption in the "galley" of the plane, when the pilot makes an announcement on the PA system that sounds like "Fat tenants pee pair e dabbin' poor dandy," but apparently was meant to convey to the flight attendant the message that he is to please prepare the cabin for landing. Dean dashes up and down the aisle with a trash bag - if you managed to make the freethrow with your trash, great. If not, too bad you'll have to hold it.

Dean takes his seat, clearly beyond exhaustion. Wheels touch asphalt, and the chorus of multiple smartphones waking up fills the air. Everyone is pecking away, talking with each other, calling calling calling, checking on connecting flights. I'm sure only the tops of heads were visible from the front of the plane.

Of course, our flight was scheduled to take off in a whopping 18 minutes. Noooo problem. Again, we practically kick the people off the plane, down stairs, across a steamy tarmac, up stairs, and into a wonderfully cool terminal. Being in Memphis, the terminal is naturally filled with the fantastic aroma of bar-b-que. We are practically faint with hunger. Nevermind that I haven't had a soda (let alone a Diet Dr. Pepper) in three hours. Dan and the people do not do well on empty stomachs (I, being a woman and the mother of three, can survive on old chicken nugget crumbs and a stick of partially-unwrapped gum from the bottom of my purse. Can I get an amen, ladies??). But we trudge on through the intoxicating fragrance of BBQ. The people are near tears begging for a sandwich. Even Dan agrees in his low-blood sugar drunken state that we do NOT want to spend the night in Memphis, only to start this fun over again tomorrow.

We make it to the plane, by the skin of our teeth of course. And again, the bright folks at Delta spread the five of us all over the plane. When the flight attendants come through with the snack tray, it was like a vision from Heaven. Dan got out his credit card, passed it to me two rows up, and said, "Get 'em anything they want."

Fifteen minutes later, we had a $50.00 credit card tab, and burn marks in the back of our skulls from the glares of our fellow passengers who had yet to be served. For our $50.00, we got two bags of M&Ms, one small can of Pringles, two glasses of wine, and a box approximatley 4"x6" with a bland white-ish substance labeled "Gourmet Cheese Spread," six crackers, three half-dollar size slices of a meat product claiming to be salami, a 1/2 ounce bag of fruit gummies, and a mint. I made a special effort to repeatedly make loud comments like, "Now kids, you just eat whatever you want since we had to run from the last flight and barely made this flight! Heh heh, thank goodness we made this flight!" Or, "Boy, kids, are we hungry from flying all day and no chance to stop and get a nutritious meal, here are some more M&Ms!"

Finally the tummies stop rumbling, and DVD players are pulled out, movies started, headphones plugged in. We land in Philly around 11 pm, and corral the people to baggage claim, then on the shuttle for the parking lot, and finally into the Suburban. At close to midnight, it is a stunningly beautiful, breezy 65 degrees in Philly. A phenomenal relief from the blistering humid heat we left behind in Arkansas. I even shivered a little as we stood in the parking lot loading the 37 bags in the Suburban.

Last I looked, it was past 1:00 a.m. when all five of us collapsed in and around our king-size bed. I didn't even bother to attempt to locate toothbrushes, despite the fact that some of us were probably growing sweaters on our teeth. Nor did I care if we were wearing the same clothes from last month - I just wanted to GET. IN. BED.

The next morning, we stumbled around each other, digging through suitcases, throwing clothes at each other, everyone vying for access to whatever suitcase someone else was in front of in some vain attempt to discern clean from dirty clothes. I was so exhausted I actually ran 103 degrees fever that night and into the next day.

So. Arkansas. We love you, but boy am I grateful to be back on the East coast, leaving the hostile summer behind with you.