Staying sane Archives - – Rock The Wrinkle

As the holiday week approaches and with it the reality that 44 million Americans will be traveling, I am doing my best to overcome the temptation to trade in my airline ticket for a frog and hop all the way across country. This is because of what happened to me several years ago in a major metropolitan airport. With sincere apologies to my hero Anne Lamott, I call this “Traveling Lord-Have-Mercies.”

They say it’s not the destination, it’s the journey…but after three days of being stranded in an airport, I have to disagree.

In this modern age of convenience, getting somewhere shouldn’t be so hard—after all, we’re not in covered wagons anymore wondering if we’ll make it over the pass before the first snowfall. Remember comedian Alan King’s hysterical routines about just trying to navigate the airport? I also have a vague childhood memory of my father relating a story about his father being stranded on a lonely dirt road in Utah and stopping to ask for directions. The local resident listened politely, scratched his head, and said, “You can’t get there from here.” I remember that when I heard it, I didn’t really find the anecdote all that amusing, though my father would laugh heartily upon each telling.

Funny how your perspective changes. The Donner party has nothing on me.

My story took place a few years ago, during a Titanic weekend at a major international airport, courtesy of an airline that for some reason, wasn’t particularly motivated to get me anywhere. Even now when pressed for details my heart rate increases ever so slightly. It’s akin to recounting a kidnapping or abduction. My only consolation is that I eventually escaped…as Dorothy exclaimed, tears running down her cheek, little Toto fleeing the Witch’s tower…”You got away! You got away!”

Never mind the sordid details: planes leaving earlier than they were supposed to, doors shut in my face, no one at the ticket counter to help me re-book, misinformation (okay, lies), rude agents, being handed a voucher for two overnight stays at a nasty airport hotel (“Yes, you have to pay for your room”), wearing the same underwear for three days, watching new customers board airplanes I was supposed to be on, agents unable to tell me why I was repeatedly bumped from the standby list, lying in a prenatal position, crying in the bathroom, airport food…no, what really stays with me about this whole incident is what it did to me mentally. Let me put it this way: I now understand Patricia Hearst.

I’ve heard of the Stockholm Syndrome, where captives are deprived of basic necessities, with no control over their surroundings, and eventually grow to blindly follow their captors. I never used to get that. But after being ignored and pushed aside for three days with no sense of escape, I began to feel my inner defenses break down. I lost my sense of who I was, or that I mattered every bit as much as anyone else in line. A blindfold and a closet couldn’t be far away.

All I wanted to do was to get on a connecting plane to a particular city.

And have a real meal. Change my clothes. Breathe outside air. Yet, it was clear as each hour, and finally, almost three full days went by, this wasn’t happening. And hey, it wasn’t my fault the plane on which I flew into this airport was late to begin with.

As I quickly passed through anger, disappointment, exhaustion, fear, new rage, resentment and amazement, I began to sink into a vat of resignation. As thick and insidious as any pit or quicksand, it was as though I was disappearing…from the airline’s wait list for each flight, from my fellow travelers who scurried to their planes, from anything familiar.

Like that crazy bug-eating guy in “Man vs. Wild,” I was willing to do whatever it took to survive.

I checked out every lounge. I walked regularly to keep my blood flowing. I looked out the windows and wondered what people who were not prisoners were doing. Finally, I bonded with a stranded couple sharing this life-in-hell experience with me. Together, we plotted our strategy: find one nice, compassionate person, grab his or her ankles, and refuse to let go until we were on board a flight to anywhere. Somehow, it worked. We found that one human being who actually took action to make sure we got on a plane. Never mind that it was going to the wrong city. At least it was going somewhere.

Giddy with anticipation, we literally ran down the jet way, stripped of dignity, restraint, and by this time, any trace of hygiene. Once in our seats, the overhead video screen turned on and began to play a commercial. In it, the smiling president of the airlines cheerfully began, “I hope you will think of us again when you have travel plans.”

You bet I will.

Being an optimist (or more honestly, a realistic optimist) I just know all will go well this time, mainly because I won’t be on that airline. And I actually do enjoy traveling. But I’ve had to be smarter about it for sure. So if you are preparing for an airline trek, be safe, be well and if your inbound flight is canceled, remember to make sure you still have reservations going outbound—or you could be taking a frog home.

“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Yogi Berra

Let’s talk passwords. How many do you have?

They’re supposed to be very private, stored in our brain’s deepest file cabinet, safe from Snidely Whiplash and his identity stealing gang. But here’s the problem: we can’t have just one. We must have lots. And lots. And we’re supposed to change them every few months, so we stay ahead of the evil forces.

And we’re not, as I’ve had to do, supposed to actually write them down. That defeats the purpose. But I have to wonder what good does it do to have something so secret you don’t know what it is?

I have four pages of passwords, and I won’t tell you where those four pages are, but I know. (I tried using a “mental” file cabinet, but the drawers don’t close all the way and the lock is rusted.) So I can’t store anything in my mind anymore except the name of my dog’s vet and which crafts fair had the best cookies last year.

Don’t get me wrong, I heartily recommend being smart about your identity. I’ve been through the whole “guess who stole your account number” journey and it is a true nightmare that can last for years. It just shouldn’t be so much work to keep sticky fingers at a distance.

If your passwords are written down, just be smart about where you stash that document. Home offices (Bermuda triangles) are a great place to store (lose) any document that matters. Chances are you’ll never find the document again, but then neither will an intruder. Feeling safer already?

Of course, every once in a while you’ll want to change your password document to reflect the 236 new passwords you’ve accumulated in just the last month. Now you have the added dilemma of needing to shred the old document. Plus, don’t forget that if this information is stored on your computer, you must be tricky and name it something no one would quickly recognize as a file of passwords. Good luck remembering what you named it the next time you are looking for it.

I don’t remember my parents going through this.

Of course, they didn’t have computers, security systems, garage door keypads, Facebook accounts, ATMs, cable television, keyless cars, or cell phones. Their refrigerator didn’t talk to them. And they—we—also didn’t have a remote control anything. We actually got up and walked across the room to change the channel. (I think I just heard a child faint.) I remember when my father won our first color television because he set a sales record with his company. It was boxy, ugly and strange-looking. But the cartoons were beautiful. Funny, I had never even thought about the fact we watched black-and-white television. I would have sworn to you it was all in color.

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Back then, password was a game. Secret words were what Groucho tried to get you to guess. You got the yo yo? I’ve got the string. (One of my favorite Rowan and Martin routines, uttered under a streetlight on a dark corner. While wearing trench coats, no less.)

Things were just simpler in so many ways. Are they easier now? Yes…if you know the password.

“You can’t come in here unless you say swordfish. I’ll give you one more guess.”

Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (aka Groucho Marx), Horse Feathers