Hey there, awesome Moxie-Dude readers!
I’m not ignoring you. I’m on vacation with my youngest daughter, boyfriend, mother, aunt and two of my mom’s friends. If we weren’t all related when we started this trip, we are now and I’m about to tell you why.
But first, raise your hand if you know the hell that comes with connecting flights . . .
Ahhh I see you’ve had some experience with this. So then you’ll understand when I say that two hours between flights when you have to pass through customs AND find your luggage means the same thing as saying ten minutes between flights. Especially when you get to the customs line and realize that there are hundreds of people ahead of you and only four customs checker people.
And at what point did I realize that barely anyone in the customs line spoke English? Right after one of my mom’s friends mentioned that she had to spend the night at this very airport when she missed her flight a few years ago.
Visions of the seven of us sleeping on chairs in the sweltering heat of Mexico City were all I needed to walk to the front of the line and ask a family of 17 Mexicans if my posse and I could go ahead because we were about to miss our flight.
A fair enough request from a total stranger – I thought. Until I realized that NO ONE SPOKE ENGLISH.
Suddenly I was saying things like “miss-o airplane-o” while turning my body into a human airplane by stretching my arms to each side followed by “bye-o, bye-o” signals with my hand.
The people in line just looked at me with what I have to call a collective dumbfounded expression. This was followed by long sentences in Spanish – of which I understood nothing – and then bellows of laughter. Apparently the Mexico City airport had hired entertainment for the long wait. Me.
Meanwhile, my “family” was watching me from the sidelines wondering what the hell I was doing.
Finally I just looked in the direction of my “family” (feeling a little like the misunderstood cousin that no one wants to acknowledge) and yelled out an impatient, “LET’S GO!”
That’s when they understood that killing time by showing off my charades abilities was not my intention. Getting us to our plane before it took off without us was.
Conclusion #1: We caught our plane but just barely. Also some of us are not in Olympic athlete condition on account of being in our 70s so this was a greater challenge than I’ve just let on.
Conclusion #2: The little Spanish that I took in high school is USELESS to me.
OMG. I can see you doing this and just blew hot coffee out of my nose. ouch! Enjoy your trip!
I’m reading your text and smiling…. I remember coming back from Texas and having 2 connections to take… Winter time… planes getting delay because of weather… so being afraid to miss the last connection I changed the last flight but my suitcases were to keep the same initial travel path and it would be to me to find the day after (probably they would not make it to the last flight)…. so thinking that I did myself a favor so I would not to have to sleep in the airport (like my suitcase would) because missing the last connection I spend a few extra hours to catch the last flight.. funny part of this story… my suitcase were waiting for me at the Dorval airport. They didn’t miss any flights and where there HOURS before me…
Oh my goodness, this is just too much. How funny!
That must have been quite the sight! I’d have loved to have seen you “demonstrating” missing the airplane. Laughing…
You are great! LOL. So glad you got 4 custom checkers and not 2. UGH.
Urgh. Connecting flights are NOT cool. Glad to hear that you were able to make yours! (Also LOL, this post was FUNNY.)
OMG! That’s wonderful! My in-laws are all Mexican and very few of them speak English and i often find myself doing the exact same thing at family get togethers. I swear they probably all sit around eating tamales and talking about that crazy white girl in their family. (And for the record, I think adding “o” to the end of the word is perfectly acceptable).
lol – Love the visual of you sitting at the table in mid-animation!