Monday, November 23, 2009

I’m leaving on a jet plane today to go home to Virginia Beach for the Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully it’ll be a nice break from Los Angeles.

After my friend Jon dropped me off at LAX I went inside the terminal to get sorted to check my bag. A Indian woman, who said she was blind, approached me. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but of course you wanna help if you can. Yeah, I was suspicious, but it seemed like she was really blind and really needed help.

She had a piece of paper in her hand with flight choices on it from priceline.com; the prices were starting @ $213, but the dates were from Nov. 9th…2 weeks ago. Weird.

As a precaution; I kept my bags on the other side of me, away from her, but I didn't wanna stand too close to her in case she was gonna reach in my pocket…ya never know.

She wanted to deal with United Airlines, but didn't have the phone number.

I believed she was blind; she had the standard walking stick with the red tip and the sensibility of someone who couldn't see.

I googled United Airlines (we were in the American Airlines terminal) on my phone and called them for her. I told the rep what the deal was and asked the blind woman for the dates and city she wanted to travel to. The flight he quoted was triple what she had quoted on the piece of paper; then he put me on hold to check further. At that point I had to go check my bags, but told her I'd come back.

I came back and she was still on hold with the rep. A few more minutes and I HAD to go. So I took her to the counter and the ticket person seemed familiar with her, but she also seemed like she might be just brushing her off.

I kept looking at the woman and then the ticket person and back; I wasn't sure she was going to help the blind woman...or if the blind woman was a scam artist...or if I was being punked. My eyes started watering and I told her I was sorry, but I had to catch my own flight. I was freaking out! My heart didn’t want to leave this woman without being able to finish what she asked me to do, but if I missed my flight it would’ve been bad news. The ticket agent assured me that she would deal with the blind woman when she had a moment. I stood there, about to burst into tears, and said I was sorry and walked away.

I know I'm being a little dramatic, but I just couldn't imagine not being able to see and doing the just the simplest things that I now take for granted.

I went to get in line for security and it was waaay too long for me to be able to get on my flight so I went back to the ticket agent and she walked me all the way to the front of the line to the actual security conveyor belt. I had no idea they had the power to do that and it was my saving grace because there is no way I would have made my flight otherwise.

I rush through the security check and get on the plane and the weirdness continues. I got to 32D, an aisle seat, and an Indian man has the window seat. Before I can even sit down he hands me his camera and wants me to take a photo of him. He seemed nice enough, but it felt a little weird.

A moment later I'm finally getting settled and opened a bag of chips to snack on; I eat a few. About 15 minutes later he pulls out the biggest bag of chips I've ever seen and offers me some. I then feel bad for not offering him some of mine-I only had a normal, little bag.

So just before we land in Philly, when everyone shoot be seated, he gets up to use the restroom. When he returns he sits in the middle seat…right next to me. What??? That seat had been unoccupied the whole 4+ hour flight. I'm thinking "What the Hell is going on?" Then after we land, but were still taxiing he gets up and moves back to his window seat. I was just about ready to be a hero and take his ass down. Was he in cahoots with the blind woman? It was just bizarre. I wanna go home…now.

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