The Glitch That Stole Christmas

The Glitch That Stole Christmas
by Diane Alden

Y2K may not have created the expected havoc on January 1st. However, it or one of its cousins created the nightmare before Christmas for my son and I. Additionally, the Godzilla of flu bugs decided to crush us into a pallid tormented shape and spit us out. Since I wisely got a flu shot my afflictions were mild in comparison to his. The asthma, bronchitis and a few achy joints only made me feel like death warmed over instead of just cold and dead.

Of course all the chaos hit on Christmas Day. We left for the Memphis airport from Holly Springs, MS, loaded down with enough baggage to make Hannibal crossing the Alps seem like a piker. As my son Nathan parked the car, I waited with six pieces of luggage and the pet carrier at the Northwest ticket counter. The cat, DILLIGAF, (which stands for Do I Look Like I Give a Flip) was going with us. I had planned to be away for a month and last time I left him for a week he meowed his resentment for a month and left hairballs in my dress shoes.

Nathan approached me at the ticket counter, nose running, eyes crimped to the size of small red runny slits. I asked him, "How do you feel and did you remember to turn the car lights off?" The look on his face turned from pale green to a darker shade of olive drab. He shook his head and in a hoarse voice said, "I'll deal with it when I get back." The lady at the Northwest counter was cheery and helpful, making sure my cat was happy and the baggage ticketed all the way to Hibbing, Minnesota, where my folks would pick us up. She made jokes about how sick Nate looked and she commiserated because she had been fighting the "bug" for three weeks. This did not make Nathan feel any better. But as we headed towards the gate, he said, "I hope nothing else goes wrong."

Well, of course it is always a mistake to say something like that before God, the universe and everyone. That is calling all the evil forces of everything that can go wrong down on one's head. Yet the plane trip between Memphis and Minneapolis was uneventful. As a matter of fact the plane was not even full. Both of us had room to sit and stretch, highly unusual in the age of sardine can travel. Nathan fell and asleep and didn't wake up until we were coming into Minneapolis. Things were looking up.

Then there was the Minneapolis airport. Interesting Nordic shops with neat, expensive yuppie clothes and gifts. Moose cups, ties, canoes, books, wild rice, and T-shirts with "My Governor Can Whip Your Governor" emblazoned on them. All the things that one associates with Minnesota. At the moose coffee shop, I stopped to sip a large cup of Caribou coffee. Savoring the rich taste and aroma as it slid down my sore throat, I watched the other weird folks foolish enough to travel on Christmas Day.

There was also what seemed like a two-mile walk to the other side of the airport where we were to catch Mesabi Air Link. The last gate at the outer most frontier of the airport. A 20 minute walk to no man's land where the puddle jumpers going to upper nowhere come and go. The section of the airport where tired pilgrims take a shuttle to the puddle jumper and walk up a ladder that seems like it wouldn't hold a small child let alone a bunch of heavily dressed folks with lots of baggage. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As we sat waiting for puddle jumper 569, I turned to look at the others waiting for their flights. There were cowboys dressed in regulation gear going to Lincoln, Nebraska or Bismarck, North Dakota. Hutterite women were outfitted in cute little caps and the plain calico dresses holding one of several children. Lined up like so much cordwood were guys in beards and heavy plaid jackets, older people piled with shopping bags filled with presents. Then there was the beautiful oriental girl in a red silk dress and suede boots my sick son was ogling from behind his Leon Trotsky sunglasses. The flights were called and everyone seemed to be boarding at what they call the one o'clock crunch.

Well, one o'clock came and went. No final boarding call for flight 569. At one thirty when the flight was supposed to take off we were still waiting for final boarding call. At a quarter of two a voice announced, that several flights including ours would not be going out on time because the computer that dealt with the pilot's flight plans was down. At this point, not even the oriental girl was holding my son's interest. I was getting those "how could you do this to me" looks from him. Though how it was my fault I have yet to figure out. In any event, other flights came and went over the next three hours and we sat thinking, why couldn't Y2K have waited a week.

Finally, a cheer arose, as the voice from above said puddle jumper 569 is ready for boarding. Great. At this point I was worried about my cat. I believed he had been stuck in a baggage hold for the last three hours and probably was thinking up ways to get even and find new places to leave hairballs.

The flight attendant, a charming older blond, apologized profusely for the delay and promised a short and pleasant flight. It's always a mistake to make promises you cannot keep.

It would be a short hop from Minneapolis to Hibbing, approximately 55 minutes. She filled us full of pretzels and peanuts and offered blankets because the cabin heater wasn't working efficiently. Nathan fell asleep again. About half way through the flight I began to notice that the plane was bouncing around quite a bit. As an experienced flyer this was not too unusual. Until I heard the pilot report that winds at the Hibbing airport were at 33 knots. This was not good.

As the plane started to descend I knew we were in trouble. My son sitting across on the other side looked at me with a "gee, mom, thanks for killing me on Christmas Day" look on his face. The older lady in the seat across the aisle grabbed my hand and said, "a little bumpy I guess."

Well, the plane had experienced a drop in altitude, a very sharp drop in altitude. Then the pilot climbed and made a turn to starboard, then another drop in altitude. Up and down like a ship on the Great Lakes during the gales of November. I imagined that we might be the Edmund Fitzgerald of the skies at this point.

The flight attendant threw up, and so did one of the passengers. We were only a few feet off the runway as wind shear hit and a 60-mile an hour wind bounced us around for what seemed like forever. I kept thinking about my cat and wondering how long he had been dead. Then looked over at my son again who just smiled and mumbled something like "I love you mom."

The answer to my frantic prayers and promises to the Almighty came suddenly. I had promised Him I would never buck fate again. I would even go to confession and tell the truth without the spin.

The pilot climbed skyward and in a minute the shaking, including mine, stopped. The flight attendant that hadn't thrown up was busy cleaning up. The pilot eventually came over the horn and said, "Folks, we have talked to the company and we are going back to Minneapolis. We will make arrangements for your stay or find other transportation to your destination."

Safe on terra firma in Minneapolis, the two pilots came out of the cockpit. They looked almost old enough to be shaving but I thanked them for doing the smart thing by not landing.

In Minneapolis, the security gestapo made us go through another metal detector at the gate in no man's land - even though we had never gotten off the plane. Could be they thought the flight had turned one of us into a mass murderer. However, that little bureaucratic detail made me angrier than the three-hour wait or the flight from hell.

Of course the old guy in charge of the X-ray machine decided that I looked like a terrorist so he searched my bag and me. The dangerous weapons he thought he saw were my lap top computer and my epi-pen for asthma emergencies. I had serious disturbing thoughts of creating a scene but my son said, "Mom, I can't deal with bailing you out of jail right now."

Northwest put us up in a nice room with a view of the river. The hotel gave us a box lunch, which was our Christmas dinner - a turkey croissant sandwich, a bag of chips and a chocolate chip cookie.

The cat had made it to the Hibbing airport on an earlier flight, before the weather front made landing impossible. He spent Christmas afternoon eating ground turkey served on a china plate at my folk's house. The next day they drove the 250 miles from Chisholm to Minneapolis and picked us up, understanding that it might be some time before I would get on a plane again.

The moral of the "glitch that stole Christmas?" If you can tell me what it is let me know! Right now I'm too busy cleaning hairballs out of my shoes.

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