Cherish Your Friends!

This is very delayed, but I thought I should recount it. At the beginning of October, Paul, Sue, and I woke up early and made our way to the Nassau airport so we could fly to Philadelphia to go to our friends Matt and Rebecca’s wedding. I’ve had to fly out of Nassau twice before, and each time has been a stress-filled departure, on account of how difficult it is to catch a cab at an early hour of the morning. You inevitably spend all the free time you have not catching a cab you spend worrying about how you’re going to get your throat slashed by dock riffraff or get raped by one of the homeless three legged dogs that make their home by the Nassau seaside. But this was not the case that morning. We got into a cab where the air-conditioning was high and the Junkaroo tunes were jamming. All signs pointed to a pleasurable travel experience.

When we arrived at the airport, we had time to spare. I think a woman cut me in the customs line, but I was like, no worries, we’re here so early everyone can get ahead of me. Sue and I enjoyed a breakfast of eggs and grits and we settled in to read the local paper. The paper was essentially a church newsletter as its cover story was about an evangelical actress who performs at conventions and office parties as an elderly alcoholic woman who professes the Good Word. My guess is that she’s the female Bahamian Tyler Perry. It also had an editorial that admonished readers to cherish your friends, and then listed the names of some of his own friends, which I think is a little defensive. If you have to write a newspaper column to prove you have friends, than maybe you don’t have very good friends in the first place.

Our flight time approached and we all noticed a curious lack of announcements telling us to board, or any evidence of a plane on the runway. I went over to investigate and was told that the plane had to have some mechanical operation performed, which I reported to Paul and Sue. But then the flight got cancelled, which was announced over the airport’s loudspeaker. I have this somewhat ungrounded fear that I’m losing my hearing, and the Nassau airport sound system does nothing to alleviate that. Everything that’s filtered through their speakers sounds like the garbled voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher, only at 300 decibels (I have no idea if 300 decibels is really loud or not, because I can’t recall how loud a decibel is, so just go along with it if you’re a licensed audiologist or something. Mainly, this is a note to my sister telling her that I know I’m probably wrong and she doesn’t need to publicly correct me).

The passengers reacted as passengers always do when their flight gets cancelled. Our bloodthirstiness was only spurred on by the indifference of the clerks behind the counter, who processed each request with a cool and unapologetic helplessness. Somehow we figured out that we were supposed to go to different airline counters, see if they offered a flight that we could transfer to, get the transfer paperwork filled out at our airline, and then go back to the new airline counter and hope that the seat we were trying to get hadn’t been taken by another savvier passenger. But Paul, Sue and I worked as a well-oiled machine, holding places in lines, securing flights, and beating off other passengers. We finally found a direct flight to Philadelphia (we had a transfer beforehand, so this was an upswing of luck for us – cherish your friends!) and a few hours later found ourselves in the midst of our friends from Chicago, relaying our travel ordeal. I was going to say I’m always bored by people telling bad travel stories and zone out when they tell them, but then realized I had just written a page-long one myself, so I apologize.

The wedding was a blast. They had a chocolate fountain, which was the best thing ever. If my parents are reading this I would like to have a chocolate fountain for when I come home in January. I can’t really remember too much from the wedding now except that our friend, Jen, who is pregnant, was jamming out to “Gold Digger” (see upcoming “Hot Entry”), and we spent a lot of the next day brainstorming names for her (and her husband Bumper’s) baby, which was really entertaining.

Saturday morning we woke up early and went to The King of Prussia Mall (henceforth known as KOP mall). My sister went to college near there so when I called her and told her where I was, she said, “What are you doing at KOP?,” which clued me in to its hipper nomenclature. Being away from malls for six months really makes you appreciate them when you have the chance, and we took full advantage of all of KOP’s bounties.

We met Sue’s college friend Katie and her daughter Maggie for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (I might have switched the names and Katie is the daughter and Maggie is the mother, so please forgive me if you’re reading this Katie/Maggie). Katie told this great story which I’m not going to repeat here because I would use it if I ever write a spec script for “Desperate Housewives.” I can tell you it contained some of my favorite storytelling tropes: divorce, deception, betrayal, former sorority presidents, and redemption.

In all, it was a great weekend full of teamwork, laughs, reunions, and pregnant women. We came back to the ship Sunday afternoon refreshed and rejuvenated. If nothing else, it taught me to cherish my friends.