Slightly Cursed

The signs were all around me; the Fates were fed up. Unfortunately, I never notice these things until I’m either smack in the middle of, or recovering from, a Cursed Event.

Sign Number One: It was 6:00am, I was on my way to Los Angeles for a much-needed vacation, and I wasn’t coffeed up. That’s always a mistake; it makes the world hate me.

Checking in the night before, I’d printed out my boarding passes specifically so the system would know my bags were coming. That’s really the only way you can ensure they’ll lose them properly.

Sign Number Two: I’d followed the rules, checking my bags with 45 minutes to spare. The attendant directed me to gate A5, handed me my claim check for the bags, and I made a beeline toward security.

The feeder line was wrapped around no less than a dozen bends, and the TSA people looked irritated about being awake. Sleepy, crabby TSA people indicate that not only are the gods mad at you, but so is the Federal government. And the Feds are way more scary.

Despite being patted down and scanned twice with a wand, the guy in front of me kept setting off the alarm; I decided he was related to Wolverine. This cost me another five minutes. Then I had to run my bags through the scanners twice, and for no particularly obvious reason. Five more minutes. Luckily, they didn’t take me in the back room for the full treatment like they did to a friend of mine at Kennedy airport.

Sign Number Three: I got through security and did the OJ run to gate A5, as instructed. Gate A5 was going to Philly. I was going to Los Angeles’ LAX. I and my two exceedingly unwieldy (and heavy) bags were then directed to a different gate, on the other end of the concourse.

Thanks to Tae Kwan Do night before, I needed to work my stiff legs and arms anyway, so the run helpfully and efficiently provided me with more exercise. Doing things efficiently is another bad omen; it means the universe will balance it out with some kind of needless churn.

With 11 minutes to departure, I tried to run, lurching with the momentum of my carry on bags: an enormous laptop-backpack filled every gadget known to Man, and a duffel bag containing random clothes and an extra pair of shoes for when the airline lost my luggage (I’d thought ahead this time). Lucky for me, my calf muscles cramped up, hobbling me.

When I got to the gate, there was one person still waiting to board. Good thing I was there 45 minutes early so I could board the plane last!

Sign Number Four was sporting a pair of shiny black Ropers, shorts that doubled as butt-floss, and enough silicone to pay Dow’s legal fees for a decade. She was the love child of Daisy Duke and Joey-from-Friends’ LA manager. My bags weren’t getting any lighter, yet I waited patiently as she blocked the aisle of the plane. Until I realized why: she was unable to properly to match her boarding pass seat number with the numbers on the aisle. Maybe the different fonts threw her?

Eventually, a nice flight attendant came along to do Daisy’s thinking for her and found her a seat. Daisy stepped back into the row, ass in front of her seat, planetoid breasts threatening to suffocate the poor guy trapped within the seat next to her, and stared vacantly into space.

Daisy’s pink, glittery bag sat in the aisle, untouched; then she turned and stared expectantly at the flight attendant. The attendant stared back. No one spoke. This left me stuck in the aisle, bags digging ravines into my shoulders, and I waited nearly 2 entire minutes for the ridiculous staring contest to end before I’d had enough.

That’s when Earthquake Girl, my alter-ego, took over. Deftly twisting my hips and shrugging my right shoulder, I kicked the big, pink, glittery bag out of my way and tossed out a look that dared its owner to speak. I’m not sure if it was because I’d subconsciously used my duffel bag as a secret weapon or if it was the pair of freakishly large, blimp-like objects embedded in her chest that did her in, but with a tiny gasp of surprise, Daisy Duke toppled over.

Arms akimbo, and nearly bludgeoning the guy still cowering beneath her torso, she looked frantically at the flight attendant. I think Daisy expected her to arrest me and take me to the back room for that semi-private, personal violation I’d avoided earlier.

Somewhere, someone snickered, lifting my mood a bit. Glaring at Daisy one last time for good measure, I stalked off toward my seat at the back of the plane, hiding my rush and trying not to laugh.

I had a back row all to myself where, for the next 2 hours, I watched as three strange men several rows in front of me took turns hanging over each other to gape out the window. Despite it being only 7:15am, one of them was drunk and sweaty. (It’s always 5:00 somewhere!) Eventually, they stopped falling over each other and passed out.

From that point, everything was great. Until about 20 minutes after everyone ate. Lucky for me, they’d already run out of food by the time they got to the back of the plane. But it wasn’t the line of people waiting to use the toilet that bothered me; it was the gas that made the experience unpleasant. And for some reason, everyone waiting to use the toilet wanted to talk to me, as if the talk-to-me-and-die look on my face wasn’t enough indication to leave me alone. Are you seeing a trend here? Yup. This was Sign Number Five.

Being rude, my usual response to unwanted attention, wasn’t working with this crowd. Probably because none of us could escape. In a last, desperate attempt to keep the never ending line of farting people from trying to talk to me, I slipped my Level 2 Happy Bunny® shirt (”Your anger makes me happy”) on over the one I was wearing.

(Note to self: farts on a plane last much longer than you’d expect.)

We arrived at LAX pretty much on time (Sign Number Six), and I went straight to baggage claim. Apparently, despite the fact that I (and my luggage) were all checked in together, at the same time, one of my bags had taken a later flight. While waiting an hour and a half at the airline’s business office for it to arrive, I examined the bag that made it with me. It wasn’t on a different continent; something had to be wrong!

Sure enough, my name was misspelled.

It all evens out though. The universe spent the next two weeks getting even.

written by vic

Despite my constant ragging on the state of New Jersey, I do miss my house sometimes. Large and well-maintained, it sat secluded on nearly two and a half acres of entomological nirvana. Aside from the eleventy-billion ticks, most of the insects were harmless. Which is more than I can say for the crazy people who lived across the street.

I never managed to make any friends during our four-year tenure there, but who needs people when you have the internet? The whole, miserable Jersey experience drew me closer to my imaginary playmates. Being socially awkward can really make you appreciate your internet friends. So much so that, upon occasion, I’ve been known to issue open invitations to friends visiting my area.

(Note to Self: Keep track of such open invitations.)

It was three o’clock in the morning, and there I was: climbing around in a maze of boxes, stacked almost six feet high and cluttering up our sun room. Like most people at that time of day, I was also in my underwear. Which was perfectly normal.

I was enjoying the peaceful quiet of my children sleeping when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Figuring it was nothing more than sleep deprivation, I ignored it. The I saw movement in the yard.

The windows of our sunroom opened to a view of our little forest. All we ever saw back there was the occasional deer hanging around, looking desperate, so I expected to see a terrified steak on legs. Instead, there was a strange man in my yard, and he was waving at me with huge grin his face.

You haven’t lived in New Jersey if you don’t know that someone smiling and waving at you from a forest at three in the morning is crazy dangerous. He moved closer to the window, still waving. Naturally, the situation required that I panic.

Unfortunately for me, I was completely surrounded by boxes. Heavy boxes. My husband had packed them, which pretty much guaranteed that they were probably filled with flesh-melting poisons or sharp, heavy objects. This makes proper panicing more difficult, but I did my best.

Ping-ponging between the stacks of deadly containers and flailing uncontrollably, I vaguely recall seeing the stranger’s face at the window; he looked… concerned. Eventually, I tripped and fell away from the windows, into the hallway.

Naturally, I did not call 911. Instead, I ran upstairs to yell at my husband for being deaf in one ear and stuffing his good one in the pillow, rendering him unable to hear my panicked screams, and thereby putting me in imminent danger through his selfish desire to get some sleep. The bastard.

It took nearly three minutes for his Caveman Gene to kick in. Shoving me aside like any good manly-man would do, he stalked down the stairs to mercilessly confront the happy psycho in our back yard. I followed him so I could make sure he did it right.

With a gutteral scream sure to do any self-respecting alpha-male proud, my husband burst into the back yard with his Maglite. He grunted and made all sorts of primal, ape-like noises, but nobody was there.

“Did somebody just knock on the front door?” No way. It had to be a ruse. The happy psycho was trying to lull us into complacency so he could strike when we least expected it?

“It rubs the lotion on its skin….”

“He’s at the front door! Get it!” I whispered, ineffectively trying to shove my husband toward the front door. I had it all planned out for him. “Blind him with the MagLite and interrogate him; if he freaks out, smack him with it!” He raised an eyebrow at me. I’m not sure why. There was a dangerous criminal out there, and this meant war!

In horror I watched him set the flashlight on the stairs, then calmly walk straight to the door and open it. He didn’t even peek through thehole! What a MAN!

“Hi, Gabor.” My husband smiled and let Happy Psycho inside. Gabor’s from Hungary, and he was one of the Randomly Invited. He’d spent that summer teaching at a youth camp in New York and had several weeks to tour the country before going home. Since he knew we were relatively close-by, he’d decided to pay us a visit.

Using nothing more than a partial address and public transportation, Gabor had somehow managed to find our house in the middle of the night. We’re both still impressed by this.

Then my husband said appreciatively, “That was one amazing bit of navigation.” He liked Gabor; Gabor was an engineering grad student, which meant they spoke the same language.

After giving him a brief lecture on personal safety in places like New Jersey and Detroit, my husband teased him. “Say, did you hear about that Japanese kid who knocked on a door in Texas and got shot?”

“I did! But I was pretty sure you wouldn’t shoot me.” They did some man-bonding while I made coffee.

Then Gabor shot me an enormous grin, turned to my husband and said, “You should have seen her when I waved! I was afraid she was going to really hurt herself.” He went on to describe, in great detail, exactly how ridiculous I looked dangling upside down in a box, thrashing around with my ass in the air while trying to escape.

Gabor stayed with us for more than a week; I still have the towel he left behind (when traveling, always take your towel!). Even though he’d mortified me, Gabor was the best houseguest we’ve ever had. Besides, his fabulous cooking totally made up for scaring me half to death.

His open invitation will never expire.

written by vic