A Trip to London
When someone says to their parents, “You guys want to pay for a trip to England for me, don’t you?” and they say yes, then a certain amount of worry comes to that person immediately preceding the flight out of the country. Will I like England? Will I learn anything? Will I enjoy all the places I saw on TV? Will the British hate me? Am I going to hate it and blow several thousand euros (well, pounds when I exchange it) my parents spent on me for a favor I was joking with them about and feel incredibly guilty when they ask how it was and I’m forced to say, “I hated it” and “Great Britain is overrated” and then feel terrible the rest of the summer and and…?
And thankfully, that isn’t the case for most people when they go on vacation. Probably just me. While waiting in the terminal for my flight (or our flight, rather, as there were 23 people on the trip), it certainly was unnerving to hear a group of strangers talking about how much the trip was going to cost them and the kind of debt they would be in. Certainly too, hearing, “I’ll cut you” while jesting with a young woman who introduced herself as Liz did nothing to make me feel more at ease.
If I had known at the time that Liz was an inexplicable paradox, I wouldn’t have been so baffled at her nonchalant threat to cut me, nor at her comment that it was “fate” that we sat next to each other on the plane. At least John, one of the three other men on the trip, wasn’t too alarming. That is, until he began acting like our dad. But I digress. I believe I had brought up waiting in the terminal for the plane. The terminal, right. Both the one in Chicago and London were a mess of people, luggage, and unintelligible intercom announcements that always made me think, “What was that? Did they just say something about our flight? Have we been delayed?” As it happened, the flight was delayed slightly, but as far as I know, there was no announcement. As for the flight itself, as much as I love the feeling of accelerating to
And thankfully, that isn’t the case for most people when they go on vacation. Probably just me. While waiting in the terminal for my flight (or our flight, rather, as there were 23 people on the trip), it certainly was unnerving to hear a group of strangers talking about how much the trip was going to cost them and the kind of debt they would be in. Certainly too, hearing, “I’ll cut you” while jesting with a young woman who introduced herself as Liz did nothing to make me feel more at ease.
If I had known at the time that Liz was an inexplicable paradox, I wouldn’t have been so baffled at her nonchalant threat to cut me, nor at her comment that it was “fate” that we sat next to each other on the plane. At least John, one of the three other men on the trip, wasn’t too alarming. That is, until he began acting like our dad. But I digress. I believe I had brought up waiting in the terminal for the plane. The terminal, right. Both the one in Chicago and London were a mess of people, luggage, and unintelligible intercom announcements that always made me think, “What was that? Did they just say something about our flight? Have we been delayed?” As it happened, the flight was delayed slightly, but as far as I know, there was no announcement. As for the flight itself, as much as I love the feeling of accelerating to