Surprise!!!!!

Life is full of them...surprises that is. Last week my husband surprised me with a ticket to travel to Puerto Rico. It was 10pm Friday night when he gifted me with a seat on a plane for 7am Saturday morning. It seems he became aware of how much I really wanted to attend a big reunion of the current and past employees of the advertising agency where I had worked for 28 years so he pulled some points from one account to another and got me a ticket with nary a second to spare.

Literally...you see it was the very Friday that the iphone had released both the new version of the phone and the upgrade to the software. Silly me...I decided to upgrade my iphone before leaving the house. I started the upload at 3:30 am; an hour I thought would be pretty free from heavy cyber traffic. Counting on an equally empty highway at the time I figured I could leave our house at about 4:30am and arrive comfortably by 5:30 which was just shy of the two hours suggested by the "authorities"but with a 7 am flight surely I wouldn't have any problem! But life is full of surprises.

First, the upload was the most distressingly slow process I have ever experienced. This itty bitty phone took longer to upgrade than my desk top computer takes to do an entire reload! My husband and I sat at the computer and stared at the screen in utter dismay as the tiny green bars barely progressed from one menu to another. I kept saying, "Five more minutes and then we really have to go" for a long string of extra five minutes'. My husband was hyperventilating and I finally swiped the phone off the docking station and ran for the car. To my shock, the upload was complete but all my personal stuff was missing. I was about to fly off to my island paradise with no telephone numbers, no pictures, no calendars or reminders! My goodness! Surprise! Just like the good old days of 1990!

Ah, but we were now seriously late. The confidence I had felt earlier that I was somehow protected from disaster by the fact that the flight was so early in the morning immediately evaporated as we drove up to the airport. Through the plate glass windows I could plainly see the excruciatingly long security line as it snaked its way around and around the airport terminal. It seems that one of the security gates had had to close (surprise!) so the remaining two lines were kilometric in length. My calculation, judging from the announcement of the wait time for the two different lines being broadcast through the terminal was that after clearing security I would have exactly two minutes before the door would close at gate 6. The tricky part was that I had been sent to the security line at the opposite end of the terminal in relation to where my gate was. Surprise!

So, I grabbed my shoes off of the conveyor belt and dragging my roll-on suitcase I ran barefooted the entire length of the terminal, yelling at gate attendants along the way to please notify gate 6 that I was on my way! As I wheezed my way on to the plane I was convinced that at any moment I was going to feel a piercing, hot pain in my chest and that my last memory of earth was going to be odd looks the rest of the passengers were giving this barefoot madwoman who had just boarded their flight! My face had turned blood red and I could barely draw a breath (after all, I'm going to be sixty next month!) as I collapsed into my seat. Passengers and crew were concerned for my health; just short of offering me oxygen and mouth to mouth resuscitation! As I managed to calm my shaking hands and clasp together the ends of the seat belt...they announced the flight was postponed for an hour. SURPRISE!

I guess it is good for the soul to remember that surprises come in many flavors and favors. This is true politically, socially and existentially.

More, later.