As the snow builds outside my window, I daydream of warmer climates and reminisce in past adventures to masquerade the compiling snow. So, if you’re longing for sunnier locales, I can relate, and if you’re counting the days to launch your escape, I would ask that you thank me for your upgrade.
No, I haven’t won the lottery, nor will I be offering you a first-class ticket but I don’t doubt that as you take your seat, this little anecdote will bring you a chuckle when you realize the comforts your plane has been afforded thanks to me.
Flashback 20 years ago and I had been placed on a medical leave, at about this time of year. Furthermore, my driver’s license had been suspended, while tests were being conducted, and so I was a prisoner of the winter and my home – it was a sample of what would come with COVID 19 lockdowns and at neither time did I fancy the lack of options I was faced with. I was desperate for a reprieve and was compassionately joined by two, soon to be, friends for an escape to the Dominican Republic.
With my doctor’s approval, we boarded the plane in Halifax and made a brief touch down in Moncton to collect more travelers. Little did any of us know the events that would occur, that most certainly have provided entertainment for years to come to the passengers and crew on board that day.
Since early childhood I had experienced fainting spells. Spells that had only gotten progressively disturbing, often leaving my in a pool of my own waste, and one time swaying a group of grade three students into believing I was surely dead, thus being asked to come to the school the next day to prove otherwise. At times, these spells came about rapidly and with little warning.
I recall feeling faint and sharing this with the friend sitting to my right but beyond that I recall very little, until, she was shaking me, gently however, and advising me that the pilot wanted to land the plane so I could be taken to a hospital in Florida. This was my first trip since high school and I had been through the routine many times so I declined the offer and insisted we continue to the DR. Then, I was out cold once again.
When I came to the second time, I was on a stretcher, being escorted from the plane with one travel companion at my side, a retired nurse, and the companion from my right going on to the resort without us to make sure our belongings arrived. At the hospital, the ER doctor issued a series of tests. After 24 hours and consuming only overripe mango for any sustenance, we took a precarious ride to the resort in a taxi, one that had us convinced we may never make it to the resort.
We enjoyed a few days of R&R, though I had a few restrictions placed on my fun. The day prior to our departure, we ventured to the city to have the doctor confirm it was safe for me to fly, providing me with a poster size x-ray of my chest as evidence of her consent.
As we sauntered across the tarmac to board our plane, the Cheshire cat grin of the attendant at the planes door greeted us, as she called out, “It’s you! We’ll never forget you. You’re the reason we had all of our seats upgraded to leather!” We offered witticisms in return but she cut us off to explain in detail how the airlines’ fleet of planes servicing the south have, or would have in the near future, been reupholstered with leather to avoid future “mishaps.”
It wasn’t much later, on the flight home, that I realized the impact of my on my fellow travelers….and I felt terrible for having bound everyone on the flight south to begin their vacations amidst chaos and what can only be politely referred to as “eau de toilette.”
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