Never Walked In High Heels

There was a loud bang as I went through Russell Square. It sounded like a gunshot causing me to slam on the breaks of my wheelchair and look around. Someone ducks; someone else grasps his jacket and attempts to walk along a little swifter. I look down to the ground only to see that my back tire of my wheelchair has exploded and I am now left to limp my way home, dragging my entire left side behind me. It’s funny, whenever something like this happens I feel absolutely positively disabled and deformed. I can literally see (despite my friends telling me otherwise) that people are staring at me thinking, “Poor girl, she can’t even afford to have two fully functioning tires. She might as well try to manipulate through life having square wheels.”

My left side of the body where the tire has blown is not approximately two inches than my right side. Everything is completely off kilter, I feel like the hunchback of Notre Dame, and all I can hear is this annoying thunk thunk thunk as my wheelchair spins over on itself and attempts to fight its way past added friction. A blown out wheelchair wheel means that my entire life has gone askew; my entire life for the rest of the ride home will be extremely inconvenient, uncomfortable, clumsy and slow. Worst of all it’s the inevitable question that immediately starts coming.

“Excuse me miss, I wanted to let you know that you seem to have a very low tire.” Very low? Really? It’s flat. It’s flapping in the wind and I am very aware of it thank you very much; it has lowered my entire center of gravity. “Did I know I had a flat” is like asking if I had five fingers on one hand. Absolutely I see the evidence of it every meter I travel, why are you bothering to state the obvious?

On the bus ride alone, seven people tell me this fact. Perhaps I have actually misjudged the typical Londoner in assuming that he is highly unobservant. They seem to be very observant of the status of my wheelchair wheels, they just don’t seem to think the individual riding on the wheelchair would have any reason to find a flat even more obvious.

I suddenly cannot pass by a male without him commenting that I have a flat tire and offering or better yet, begging me to let them fix it. I politely decline and can’t help but think of the potential pick up lines that I am wasting to play the damsel in distress; the woman by the side of the road flashing her lights because she has a flat tire is simply too easy. Suddenly there is an over abundance of testosterone around me, so much so that it seems like everyone thinks I am too stupid to notice what they see plainly and every male I meet swears up and down that he is handy and could fix it in a flash.

After about three hours, I manage to make my way back into the flat. Flat in this instance being my living accommodation and not my flat tire. I work my chair which now has a quickly drained battery due to the increased friction back into my home and quickly plug it in. A few hours later I hear my roommate arrive, he is one of the few people who I would let touch my wheelchair. He has fixed his share of flat tires, broken lights, replaced about every square inch of the chair so much so that I know the object I am dependant on to get around London is in very good hands; Except I would have hoped that he didn’t utter the next words that flew out of his mouth after he greeted me.

“Hey, were you aware of the fact that you had a flat tire?”

My hands were trembling as I opened the letter. It explained to me that the railroad company involved was not at fault for my complaint; rather they listed it as an “unfortunate incident.” This term unfortunate kept cropping up as I read the letter further. It was unfortunate that I felt dissatisfied; it was unfortunate that things had not turned out better. However, there is nothing to be done. It was merely an unfortunate incident that could have happened anywhere and pointed the finger at no one.

In corporate situations both in the United States and the United Kingdom there seems to be a lack of willingness to apologize. Everything is either unfortunate or a mistake, but not worthy of a true apology. We as a society have seemed to forget that words on their most basic level actually mean something or perhaps we haven’t forgotten it at all. Perhaps the unwillingness to admit fault or wrongdoing is specifically because words mean something and if one company would say “it was our fault” a precedence would be set; meaning that the company itself was fallible and able to take responsibility for it’s own actions.

An unfortunate incident means that there is no one to point the finger at. There is nobody at fault in the situation. It’s a phrase that has been no doubt concocted by corporate lawyers seeking to make their client’s companies able to run as smoothly and unobtrusively as possible. But sometimes responsibility actually needs to be taken, and here is the area where the corporate lawyers would prefer to never acknowledge it’s own existence.

Corporate avoidance is what occurs when lawyers and representatives call an error an unfortunate incident, meaning that companies and corporations are above laws which individuals are subjected to. If there is ongoing discrimination within a particular department of a corporation, particularly when dealing with the public, it is routinely ignored, stating that the event was an abnormality and however advantageous and unfavorable said occurrence may have been, it is not to be ceased or rectified. Worse still, by refusal to take any action or responsibility to ensure that the customer will never be treated the same way again means that such behavior is encouraged within a corporation or a business. If an individual discriminated against his fellow man by refusing to allow someone with a physical disability onto a train, he would be called a bigot and a corporations policy did likewise, not only would the event be named as something culpable rather than discriminatory, arrogant or wrong.

For a corporation to refuse to take responsibility for it’s own behavior means that nobody who works for that company needs to feel guilty. Every single one of the lawyers who term the error as being an unfortunate incident can sleep at night knowing that no one will end up in jail and their legal team will calmly and quietly sweep the issue under the rug without further question.

If this is a world where unfortunate incidences occur rather than mistakes or wrongdoings, we are looking at a world where there are no legal checks in our system to make sure that companies and corporations treat individuals as fairly as individuals used to treat each other. Such a world means that there is no way for an individual to even begin to challenge a corporation which is unjustly jeopardizing his home, family, or life. 

I am in an airport terminal that is seven degrees Celsius. I have seen no one in an hour and a half. The last person I saw took my coat off claiming that it would make it easier for me to get on the airplane. I am in a t-shirt; my nail beds are getting blue. My flight was scheduled to leave approximately one hour ago but was delayed unexpectedly due to weather concerns. The last person I spoke to barely knew any English and I had to piece together the little Arabic I knew in order to efficiently communicate with her. I have no idea if the gate has been changed, no idea where anyone is. Nothing. The only thing I do know is that every two minutes a pre-recorded message comes on over the intercom of the airport “Please do not leave your luggage unattended at any time. Luggage left unattended will be removed and properly destroyed.” I can’t help but wonder what they would do if they found a person unattended. I am at London Gatwick Airport, and this is very typical behavior of British airport staff towards disabled individuals.

I find London to be woefully underprepared for the Olympics and Paralympics that are quickly approaching within the next two years. What I find more disturbing than the rampant inaccessibility of the city during modern times is the fact that public transportation is still next to impossible to make use of if you have any form of disability. There are tons of other issues, such as education and home health care that is severely impeding the lives of individuals who don’t necessarily fit into the mold of normalcy that the world seems to assume as the perfected human condition. But the issue of transportation and lack there of is one that is particularly close to my heart. Without accessible transportation available to you, life is static. Transport for London estimates a majority of disabled people in this city leave their homes less than once per week. This is, of course, one way in which London is underprepared. The problems that stem from the lack of adequate transportation for an entire demographic population are far-reaching and decisively complex. Sources I have read recently state that at much as 80 percent of all disabled people who are capable of working are faced with unemployment. While this too is shocking, lack of transportation is a component that contributes to this appalling statistic. individuals who cannot leave their house find it exceedingly difficult to be employed. It is impossible to travel across the city to get into work when inadequate public transportation.

These days, mobility needs to be seen as a human right and even human responsibility rather than simply a function of modern society. If the way a society treats its most vulnerable people is an indication of how civilized its people are, then simply looking at London’s public transport system proclaims that that are still parts of the western world which are barbaric. Here’s hoping such isn’t on display when the entire world watches London in 2012.

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” –James Madison

The 188 pulls up to my stop and lowers its ramp. The nervousness in my stomach disappears for the time being and I am momentarily at ease. In my experience there is about a fifteen percent failure rate of bus ramps not opening up. Now I just have to worry about the bus ramp opening up when I want to get off.

“It sure was nice of them to put those ramps on buses so you can use them wasn’t it,” a little old Irish lady says to me. Nice? No, actually, it isn’t nice. It is the law. When people with disabilities chained themselves to buses as a form of protest, it took years for the lawmakers to take action. It wasn’t until five years ago that all buses were required to have ramp access before leaving the depot. And even with that rule in effect, I still can’t get on a bus a large percent of the time. Call the accessible transit situation in London frustrating, hellish, difficult, or even unfair if you’d like. But you cannot call it “nice.”

I’m always a bit bewildered by people on either side of the Atlantic who insist that disability legislation is something nice for lawmakers to come up with. I’m with Madison on this one, it is not the role of the government to be charitable or nice. Establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty and well as promoting the fact that all men are created equal is not merely something “nice” to do. One is baffled why the subject of disability rights is seen as an as issues hand-outs rather than justice.

President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock High School to escort nine African American children into having the same education as their white peers. We do not look back on that event and say that Eisenhower was being “nice.” We do not give women the right to vote because it is a matter of social grace. Nor should we promote equal access to public transportation because it can act as a form of alms. Perhaps it is a statement about our society’s views of individuals with physical limitations that we choose to see such issues of inaccessibility as a form of inconvenience rather than social injustice.

The bus stops in Russell Square when myself and the woman alight. I again feel a sense of relief once I reach the pavement and turn to get to my appointment, smiling at the woman out of trained politeness. Looking behind me I see her walking away slowly, dependent on her wooden cane. I can’t help but wonder, as her body becomes increasingly uncooperative with age, if notices that her world is shrinking as well. Perhaps she doesn’t even realize that growing older and loosing stamina shouldn’t result in a smaller world.

The dog is nervous because he sees a suitcase on my bed. It’s fully packed and my last remaining hours of visiting my family in Vegas are quickly coming to a close, and I look forward to getting on the big plane that will take me back to London where my work is. Getting ready to board a plane is always a slightly surreal experience. Mom ties my shoes and brushes my hair before pulling it back in a tight braid so it will not be in my way during the flight. Dad comes home from his job at the office to make me lunch and feed it to me as a sort of last meal. These are the rituals I take to board the exact same plane over and over to get to the exact same place at the exact same gate, take the exact same road back to my flat, and even plop down on my bed before undoing the shoes that Mom tied, the hair she braided, and realizing that my last real meal was yesterday with my father. Travelling this route works like a machine. Many cogs put it together to create something that you would never suspect would happen unless you looked at the bigger vehicle.

When most people who I knew from my childhood hear that I currently live and work full time in London, they are in shock. Ex-teachers, therapists, family friends, relatives, immediately begin peppering my mom with questions about how I survive in a foreign country so far away. The fact that we share a common language doesn’t seem to make any difference with regards to me being a foreigner. How does she eat? Who ties her shoes? Who washes her hair? And to tell the truth, this reaction, although on one level understandable, on a certain level is surprising. The more I think about it the more I wonder what they are expecting me to make of my life? It seems too obvious that I’m meant to be in London doing what I’m doing. After all it was their influence from a young age that taught me not to fear the world but embrace it and explore all the corners of the world I could possibly get to.

At first, when I announced that I was headed to England immediately after graduating from university, I was in a way lauded. “Everyone should take a year off and put some maturity under their belt,” they told me. I could still see the fear in their eyes but understood that there was more than this. Several of them did exactly that after their graduation, joining the Peace Corps to live in a remote part of the world and visit a place where they could lend a helping hand. One teacher from high school even encouraged me, saying in an email, “You are entering your wandering years… Don’t let the careerist itching common to our breed start to itch at you. The 20’s are a searching time… Look at this time as the fruit of your ancestors’ hard work. You owe them the best.” Below is a quote from John Adams in a letter to Abigail, as if such a quote was proof of the wandering years he suggested. But, at my age, the gap year between college and real life should have ended several years ago and the fact that I received a degree in London just recently, points to roots that are slowly beginning to grow away from home, raising the eyebrows of so many.

But why is the fact that I’m still in England so shocking? As I mentioned earlier, I was raised around individuals who came to America from foreign places to pursue their own dreams. I am as much the Brazilian woman who taught me to dress myself as I am the fact that I still need magnetic buttons to close my coat. I am made up of the European woman who taught me to speak and suggested to my mother that someday I would not just master English but other languages as well. I am the Hungarian woman who came to our summer camp every year in order to serve children with a disability, and I am also made up of the Canadian atheist who went into the mission fields of Mexico with me not for claiming what I believed but realizing that I should be able to proclaim it myself. These individuals,  as far as they came,  a piece of themselves was given to me as well as making the woman I am today. Part of being who they were was the love of travel and adventure. That’s where my love of the same travel and adventure came from.

I always feel a bit nostalgic as I untie my shoes once I’m back in my flat. I immediately miss whoever tied them last, wanting to keep them tied as a sort of keepsake. But, I know that the person who did so did not raise me to sit still and cling to loved ones in one place. The people who brought me up taught me to explore,  even despite all the potential difficulties that may come of it. I am thankful for the person who tied my shoes last, realizing the irony of not being able to tie one’s own shoes but yet flying halfway around the world. I am in communion with the person who will tie my shoes in London, living life where we are in the present moment, and I wonder who will tie my shoes when I become restless and seek to travel again?

I’ve recently discovered that there are some situations in which public transportation is completely inappropriate. I’m not speaking about situations where vehicles are inaccessible, or difficult for me to use, rather, just the opposite. I’m not having unsaid difficulty. But someone else is in a situation on public transport that is absolutely bizarre.

Today I was on the bus going home. The bus was shockingly empty, until about halfway through, at which point twenty people entered the bus at once. Being preoccupied with my work, I continued reading the book I was currently using as a resource for my occupation. The bus traveled on a little way and I noticed two things: the first thing was how exceptionally quiet this particular bus ride was. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and of course children were still at school, babies were home for naps, and the businessmen were still in their cubicles, causing an absolute dead silence on the bus, unique for London Transport. In this city, you don’t talk to strangers. Ironically back home, the reason you don’t talk to strangers is that they might be weird, whereas here, the strangers will probably think you are weird for talking to them. And so, we all listened to our  iPods, read our books, and faced forwards in silence.

The second thing I noticed was that I could swear I suddenly smelled fresh water fish. Strange smells are unfortunately a common enough occurrence on public transportation, particularly on a bus, and so I dismissed the smell assuming it to be on account of someone’s poor hygiene.

As I was reading, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw what looked like a bit of trash. Again, a very mundane thing. And then I noticed that the trash wasn’t obeying the laws of physics. When the bus would slam on the breaks, this object would go towards the back of the bus, not towards the front, as the rules of inertia dictated. I took a closer look…

My first reaction was that someone had let a frog loose on the bus. Perhaps a school kid wanting to cause trouble, or simply losing his pet. And then I noticed that this object was not only alive, but crawling with eight legs. Frogs, to the best of my knowledge, don’t typically crawl (or for that matter have eight legs), and so my mind went into desert mode. Immediately I thought it’s a tarantula. And then, as I examined the creature underneath the seats of the bus (fortunately on the opposite side of me), I began to wonder where on earth anyone would have the resources to get a tarantula in London, given how much they guard the selling of lockable knives and chewing tobacco, I was amazed that someone not only was able to get a hold of a tarantula, but also had the boldness of releasing it on a bus. Boldness or stupidity…you choose. But, my reasoning further deduced, arachnids are typically hairy. And this looked slimy. I watched it a little more and realized it was a crab. Over 5 inches in diameter, it was a crab. There was a crab loose on a public bus in London.

Now, this immediately put me into a very unique position, because being on public transport, if I am to say anything to a stranger, such as “Hey there’s a giant fresh water crab on that seat and it’s really scary,” they would immediately assume me to be one of the crazy people. It’s part of the territory when you have a disability. You get to be the victim of everyone’s stereotypes about disability. And they would smile and nod, claiming that they didn’t understand. I know because I’ve relived this situation over and over. I was not about to do it again. So, I closed my book, sat back, and tried to watch the scene unfold.

Within seconds a woman in full African dress goes from being seated to jumping with both feet on the seat and screaming (how on earth she was able to do this in an ankle length skirt, I don’t know). And then, the small Chinese woman from the front of the bus runs to the back, picks up the crab, runs back to her seat, and places it into a blue plastic grocery bag, which is also full of, well, crabs. While doing this act, she crosses from the front of the bus to the back apologizing to every person along the way, as in, looking at each of us and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And I sat there in utter disbelief of the entire absurdity and, might I add, multicultural diversity of the situation. The rest of the bus ride was silent.

The entire thing felt like something out of Annie Hall, which made me immediately wonder, did Annie and Alvy take live lobsters on the subway with them in order to get them back to Annie’s kitchen? What do you do in a society that is dependent on public transportation if you need to transport something really absurd such as sea life or crustaceans? For a public transport system that attempts to meet everyone’s needs, there are some things even the folks at TFL can never even dream up.

The Asian woman waited until 5 stops later to get off, securely holding her two grocery bags of live creatures. I can only assume that somebody had some very fresh crabs for dinner that night.

“Hi. Why are you still in the UK? I hate London. I hated it when I was there three years ago. Nobody is friendly…I don’t get what you’re doing spending your time over there.”

This was how he opened his phone call to me. The next hour was a barrage of attacks about how not everyone got what they wanted out of life and it was time for me to come home. Every time I pointed out that I owned my own company or that I was paying my rent just fine, it didn’t seem to matter. Then came the killer statement, “What you need to do is move to New York City and write about being disabled for disabled people.” It was a suggestion that was completely impractical. I’ve never been to New York and I don’t know anyone in the entire state. The suggestion was insidious as it prayed on my faults and immature desires to quit and go home after a difficult year. But when you know it’s the wrong thing to do, and the last thing you need to hear is that you should quit and go back home. It was insulting because after 10 years of knowing me, all he thought I was capable of doing was writing at my desk to a 100% disabled audience.

If the phone call had been from a family member, I would have been able to handle it better. But this was one of my best friends—someone who had taught me since I was 15. I sat in the back of his classroom with my hand raised for three years asking questions and learning about the world as he saw it. A high school teacher’s job is to prepare his students to face the frightening prospects of an infinite universe, and to equip those students with the tools they need to succeed beyond there wildest dreams. This was the man who taught me that my mind and my capacity for thought and innovation was unlimited and a great gift to be embraced. He was even a man who went to bat for me against the high school administration, insisting that I would not be put in a special education classroom and swearing up and down that doing so would be a “grave injustice to her mind.”

And here he was now, not recommending or even insisting, but it felt like demanding, that I quit and move back to the States in order to go the safe route. “Most people want A, B, and C out of life but they don’t get A, B, and C. They have to settle for E, D, F. You’re job is to figure out what kind of E, D, and F you have to offer the world.” Is this the same person that I read Catcher and the Rye with? The same man who told me stories about going to Morocco and encouraged me to do likewise after college graduation? He had been one of my support structures and was now feeding me platitudes about life that I wouldn’t have even thought him to believe.

I finally hung up on him after and hour. I couldn’t take anymore. He continued despite my insistence that I was paying my rent, I was learning from the real world, and there were things in London I couldn’t leave. “Like what?” he questioned indignantly. Like the company, my company and the friends I’ve found over the past three years, all of the professional connections I had built up, my home, my church, my life. Even though the going was tough, I couldn’t just get up and walk away from it.

After a few days of cooling off, I realized that one of two things had happened. Not seeing him for three years meant that I no longer knew him, and he no longer knew me. Either way there was a rift, and given his response to my pleads and insistences that he see the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fix it. His mid 20s may have been the time that he decided to leave Morocco to come back home and teach, but I wasn’t ready to do anything of the sort even as noble as teaching was. I still feel deeply called to take on the challenges of the unfamiliar and boundless world he taught me about. Not going to familiar territory to receive the consistent paycheck and live the easy life. When I was younger, he challenged me to do exactly what I am doing. His current insistence of dropping what I am doing just because it is difficult doesn’t fit with the worldview that he helped to give me. And so, although I’m not sure who it was I talked to over the phone, I refuse to go home and lead the comfortable life. If that means I am a disappointment, or so beyond what a mentor thought I was capable of then so be it. Part of growing up is realizing that nobody has all the answers, and that we’re all really trying to get by on a ninth grader’s wet shoestring. The second we realize that about ourselves, our parents, our mentors, and everyone else we meet, the horizons open up and you see the freedom to make yourself and this world what you want it to be—something you never knew you had.

              When I finally sat down to clear through my emails this morning, I was greeted by a common enough occurrence. It was a response from a complaint I filed months ago.

              “Dear Ms. Stevens,

              We were very saddened to hear about your expirences with our company during X concerning the matter of Y. Let me assure you that we pride ourselves at Z on our customer service.  This matter will receive a full investigation.  However, let us remind you that our policy for customers that need special assistance is that we require 48 hours notice in order to give you our best service.  Please keep this in mind when making further arrangements.”

              The above is the excuse of the British across the island.  They are more than happy to give a disabled person full service as long as the customer gives them forty-eight hours notice that they will require their services.  What kind of person can plan their life so far ahead that they will be able to determine forty-eight hours in advance when they are going to need to run out to the store and get an emergency carton of milk because they’re making a cake?  Public transportation systems such as Southeastern Railway live and die by the excuse that if I don’t let them know when I need to use their trains two days in advance, they aren’t required to get out a ramp and help me onto the train car. 

              The thing is, even if someone does call forty-eight hours in advance, half the time the request doesn’t get to the appropriate personnel.  It’s like the special assistance line of so many companies are just for show and don’t actually connect to the main office.  My suspicions are even further encouraged when I am told that I need to dial a different number to reach the special assistance line, and that the head office cannot automatically transfer me to the correct extension. In fact, most of the time, the two offices aren’t even in the same town. 

              To require forty-eight hours advanced notice is not equal access. End of story. Don’t fool yourself. Don’t console yourself by believing a lie. Nobody else has to make reservations to use a bus two full days before actually stepping onto it. In fact, after a quick poll amongst my university colleagues, I found that none of them even had the ability to consistently plan that far ahead. And many of those friends study at Ivy Leagues now.

              The bit about this whole situation which I find most disturbing is the abject arrogance that the forty-eight hour rule fosters. By saying that I can only make plans forty-eight hours in advance, do you know how many opportunities you’re expecting me to forego? It means no spontaneous dates, no sudden trips out to the movies, and no going into town at a moments notice to see an upset friend. Emergency meetings at work or sudden business trips are now out of the question, thus jeopardizing my job. The forty-eight hour rule is invasive, suggesting that I could never have an appointment of any importance which required unexpected travel. Above all, I find this suggestion not only insulting, but simply erroneous as well.

              I’ll close by addressing those whom the forty-eight hour rule directly affects. Do not be fooled. Do not stand for the reasoning that any advanced notice required for special assistance counts as equal access. If able bodied people can just show up and fully use a company’s services, you should be able to as well. Do not allow the fact that they are understaffed as a sufficient reason as to why they need forty-eight hours advanced notice. If a restaurant is understaffed do they turn away people who haven’t made a reservation? The fact that they are understaffed is their problem, not yours. Do not allow them to throw the weight of poor business planning onto you, their paying customer.

              As much as possible, refuse to comply with the forty-eight hour rule. The only thing that allows companies to continue with this absurd and degrading practice is your submission to it. You can refuse to give it to them. You can demand to travel as freely as anyone else. You must point out this absurd and insulting presumption in order to put and end to it. The forty-eight hour excuse is poor logic at best. And, like everything else in life, falling for a fallacy can do as much damage as perpetuating it.

             I wake up. That sort of heat that comes upon you when you haven’t gotten enough sleep is radiating through every inch of my body, particularly my eyes. I promise myself once again that the next time I have to do this, I will get more than four hours of sleep. I stumble into the bathroom and try to wash my face with what remains on the sink. Unbelievable. Going downstairs and facing the rest of the day seems completely unfathomable at this point. I get dressed seriously wondering where my toothbrush has gone to before I remember that I’ve packed it away. 

              I climb downstairs, stumble into the kitchen where my roommate has made breakfast.  He says, “Good morning, love.”  And I can’t be bothered to reply.  Fifteen minutes later the driver comes and comments on the fact that I only have one bag.  I’m in transit between two very different lives, neither of which overlap, even when it comes to clothing. 

              The outside is cold and gray. The sky has been that exact same color for weeks. We weave in and out of morning traffic trying to guess which tunnels that cross the river are closed, which ones are open. It begins to rain. I begin to wake up and do a mental checklist in my head. Passport, wallet, itinerary, American Express card.  Technically with these four things, the world should be mine. The thing that brings me out of my morning stupor is the fact that I am slightly OCD. So even when I am holding all four items in my hand, I still don’t believe that I have them.

              Get to Gatwick, and the rain lets up. The sun breaks through just a tiny bit. It’s cold, and I refuse to wear a coat. Later today I won’t need a coat, so why bother bringing one now? Approaching the check-in desk repeating every five minutes, “Passport, wallet, itinerary, cell phone.” The woman at the desk looks at me funny, first because I’m in a wheelchair. This somehow is ground-breaking news for her.  Once we get over that hurdle, she is shocked to find that I only have one bag. Now she has a serious problem. The government has told her to be on the lookout for anyone who is different and not checking any baggage, which I perfectly fit the description of. She sends me through heavy duty security.

              The female security guard decides to either pat me down or feel me up, I’m not sure which direction she is going. All I can think about is how much I would really appreciate a cup of coffee now. They take every single thing out of my carry on bag mentioning that my bag is particularly heavy. I get jokes about how I must be one of those high-maintenance travelers. Coffee.  The only thing that is keeping me from not exploding at this point is coffee. And the fact that everything happens the exact same way everytime I go home.

              Through security. I’m in a part of the airport which is called, “The Special Assistance Area.”  This name is particularly British, and thus completely non-descriptive. I prefer to call it the “Cripple Corner,” where they shuffle off anyone who has any sort of ailment which prevents them from getting to their gate on time.  Nobody speaks English at the Cripple Corner, particularly the staff. I sit there having no idea what is going on, watching every nationality known to man, and wishing I was an optimist. An optimist would call the Special Assistance Area a great melting pot where race, creed, and disability didn’t matter.  I am not an optimist. I am irritated. And I want my coffee. 

              Then suddenly I am whisked away by a small Asian woman who also does not speak English, to gate number who-knows-what. You have to travel through the rip in the space-time continuum to actually get there. I wait in another Cripple Corner before boarding. I board first. Everyone else takes over half an hour to get situated on the plane. Strap in. Some people still have to watch when they do the seatbelt bit which should be a prerequisite for getting on the plane in the first place, in my opinion. If you don’t know how to put your seatbelt on, you’re a health and safety hazard. Drink some coffee (finally), and then take off. 

              The next ten hours are pleasant except for the fact that I need to ask for help every time I need to use the toilet. “Just to walk there, not actually to use the thing,” I explain. I haven’t asked permission to use the bathroom since I was in grade school, and I find the level of explanation required absurd. No doubt in a few years the flight attendant will have to do paperwork about it. 

              Prepare for landing. I look down and it looks like I am landing on Mars.  I have now flown from home to home, and this home is the dead opposite of the home I was at ten hours ago. Somehow the rip in the space-time continuum has followed me so that a ten and a half hour flight which takes off at 11am, lands at 2pm. The sky is blue and by the time I get outside, my urban black clothes are making me sweat. Inside the airport I pass by approximately sixty slot machines, five Elvises, and two women I’m sure work as showgirls at the Stardust.  The airport attendant wants to know how I’m doing in school. I have never seen this man in my life, but he knows me and we are soon speaking in Spanish which feels as comfortable as speaking in English. Pass by the passport people, and again explain that I really do only have one bag, and no I haven’t forgotten any suitcases on the conveyor belt. Outside I am greeted by a gigantic billboard of Barry Manilow, blue skies, and a raging headache from the sunshine. 

              Eight thousand miles. Eight time zones. And two completely different universes. I’m now very tired and very confused. . .