jumpingfish

1. Leaving For Town

Their ice chest is good, but it’s not a Yeti. They periodically look at them but recoil in horror every time they see the price tag. It’s just crazy. And as he’s let the fair and industrious Trudy know, thanks to his cousin Stevie’s stories when he was young, he’ll never be camping en pleine air in bear country. For them, a Yeti unambiguously qualifies as a want not a need.

Being Yeti deprived, after three days almost all the ice was melted. The fair and industrious Trudy had been talking about this eventuality for two days, and her husband had not been responsive, finding the prospect of cranking in the van’s awning to be just an epsilon more than he wanted to deal with. But now there could be no further procrastination. It was time to leave South Llano River State Park and drive the five miles into Junction for ice.

They retracted the awning that was attached to the van, which they agreed they’d leave rolled up, since next day’s weather called for rain, and they didn’t want it to be wet on their drove home.

Then he drove into town alone. No sense, they figured, in the both of them going into the store — no sense when we’re all keeping our social distance. He left campsite 39 behind with Izzy sitting in Trudy’s lap who was reading a book in the sun of that warm afternoon.

2. At The Grocery Store

The park is on US 377 which runs north into Junction where it turns west a few blocks and then continues beyond Interstate 10 on the north side of town.

There is a grocery store there, where 377 turns west. So instead of making the turn, he drove straight into the lot and went inside. In for ice, of course. But also maybe in for toilet paper. And maybe in for some wipes. Or a gallon of bleach. 

As it turned out, there was only a small bottle of bleach, which he bought. No toilet paper. No wipes. So he rolled the cart up to the cashier with that bleach. And four bananas. And a box of pop-tarts — a splurge for his fair and industrious spouse who had made a comment the previous day about pop-tarts after they saw a kid walk by with some. (In the event, her desire for pop-tarts implicitly required a companion toaster which their well-stocked rental van did not include. And having no desire for pop-tarts himself, they ended up taking them home the next day, additional provisions perhaps for the shut-in life that they’d soon be returning to.)

“And two bags of ice, please,” he said to the cashier.

3. They Got Eggs?

As he pushed his meager load back to the van, a pickup truck drove up and stopped next to him. The driver had a sun-worn face, a cowboy hat, and an elbow out the window.

“They got anything in there?” the driver asked.

“Well, they got some things.”

“Eggs? They got eggs?”

He had not gone in for eggs, but he did remember seeing another sun-worn man pushing a cart laden with many things that included eggs and bread. 

“They got eggs.”

“And what about bread?”

“Yep, I saw someone with eggs and bread.”

“Well that’s great,” the driver said. “Thank, you.”

“Take it easy,” he said to the man who drove on. He loaded his modest purchase into the van, turned the ignition, listened to the sound of the Volkswagen engine, and headed back to campsite 39.

1. What Andrea Told Me

I was stranded in Dallas.

It was Friday on a three day weekend. I had just arrived at Love Field to catch a connecting flight to Chicago Midway, but that flight was cancelled due to a winter storm.

At the customer service desk, I spoke to a woman named Andrea. She summarized the options. They could get me to Chicago two days later (So many flights had been cancelled, it would take that long.), or I could return home in two hours. There were 23 seats on the return flight, so I had some time to make up my mind. I told her I’d be right back. She smiled.

The terminal was busy. I found a quiet-is corner and consulted with my brother and the fair and industrious Trudy. I decided to fly home.

When I returned to the service desk, Andrea was no longer there.

“My friend Andrea is gone,” I joked, pointing to her now-vacant computer. The rep behind the desk looked over at the empty computer and smiled.

2. What Deborah Couldn’t Do

This woman’s name was Deborah. I explained my situation and and summarized what Andrea had told me.

“I think I’m going to fly back home.”

“Ok,” Deborah said. She stared at her computer, punched a few keys, and was staring some more.

“By the way,” I said.

She looked up.

“You guys are awesome!” I said, smiling.  

You must understand that this isn’t like me. My mother called me Eeyore when I was very young. But this business of “It’s All Good” as part of teaching, has had some kind of transformative effect on the neural pathways in my brain. More myelin. More dopamine. Less cortisol. Less lizard brain. I am more cheerful. I am happier. Eeyore makes fewer appearances. And so it was as I spoke to Deborah.

“You guys are awesome!” I held up my hand. She smiled, and we did a high-five. 

After a few minutes, Deborah had booked me on the return flight. I asked if I could apply the fare from the (cancelled) connecting flight to my flight back home. And I asked about Monday’s (now abandoned) return flights from Chicago?

“From here, I can’t give you a credit. I don’t have the permissions,” she explained. “You’ll have to call customer service next week.”

“Ok, that’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just get me home. I’ll handle the return flight myself.”

3. What Deborah Did, Anyway

I might was well said, No worries. It’s all good.

Just as I was about to walk away, Deborah said, “Wait. Let me call my help desk and see what they can do.”

She picked up the phone and had a conversation with someone in some office in some city likely far away. When she hung up, she pushed a few keys, stared at her screen, pushed a few more keys, stared again, typed for a while longer, printed something out, and then looked up.

“Here is your boarding pass for your flight home,” she said. Then she turned it over. On the back, she wrote an 800 number. 

“Keep this boarding pass,” she said. “On Monday during working hours, call this number and tell them that there are some notes in your record. They will help you.”

4. What Thelma Saw and Did

This morning I followed Deborah’s instructions. I called and spoke to Thelma.

I gave her the background. I asked if she could see a note, which she could. She put me on hold, and when she came back, Thelma said everything had been taken care of.

“Do I need to do anything else?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve refunded the cost of your full itinerary to your credit card, since we didn’t get you to your destination. You should see the refund in seven to ten days.”

Not a flight credit, mind you. A full refund.

Thank you, Andrea. Thank you Deborah. Thank you Thelma. What customer service! It is indeed all good.

1. Boarding the Plane

I had boarding pass C12. The plane was mostly full. It was going be hard to find a seat like this which had enough room for my backpack in the nearby overhead bins. There was a middle seat available in Row 2.

 “Is that seat taken?” I asked the woman in the aisle seat. 

“This one?” the woman asked, pointing to the seat next to her. I smiled and nodded.

“I don’t know, there’s this …,” and she held up a box of Kleenex that had been sitting on the empty seat. A young girl was sitting alone in the window seat, engrossed in a video on an iPad. The woman thought the Kleenex might be for someone who was with the her. 

I leaned over and said to the girl, “May I sit in this seat?”

She turned her head, held up her hands, and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Maybe!” I repeated. The people behind me laughed. 

“Ok… here I come. I’m maybe sitting next to you.”

2. Flying to Austin

When the plane pushed back from the gate, the girl set down her iPad and tried to buckle her seat belt. Clearly she had done this before. She fumbled with the buckle for a few tries, gave up, and returned to her iPad. When we got to the tarmac and the announcement came that we had been cleared for take-off, she tried again unsuccessfully.

“Do you want some help?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I reached down and turned her buckle around.

“Here, try again.”

She did. It worked. She quickly turned back to the iPad.

As the plane accelerated down the runway, I heard her talking to herself, but it was hard to make out what she was saying. Whatever it was, she was clearly unfazed by the whining turbofans and the plane shaking. 

The flight from Austin to Dallas is brief. On this day it was also bumpy. We bounced around. There were no drinks. But the girl was oblivious, setting her iPad down only to change positions.

A few times she looked over, and I tried to talk with her. Had she flown before? Was she going to visit someone? She would look at me and then return to her iPad. 

3. Arriving at the Gate

When we landed, her face was glued to the window, and I heard her mutter, “There’s Austin.” The thrust reversers roared. The breaks groaned. As we turned off the runway, she pulled her backpack from under the seat and put her iPad away. At the gate, she unbuckled her seatbelt in one smooth pull.

A flight attendant came to get her. Since we were in Row 2, within moments they were walking up the gangway. I was behind them. The girl jogged up the slope. The flight attendant walked quickly to keep up, holding the girl’s hand and leaning down to read her unaccompanied minor badge.  

A man was at the end of the gangway, framed by the door leading into the terminal. He had a backpack over his right shoulder. He was smiling. She broke into a run, her pack bouncing on her back. The flight attendant let her go. 

When she got to him, he said, “How you doin’ kid?”

She said, “Fine.”

Anand Giridharadas, as his about page begins, is a writer.

He is the author most recently of Winners Take All which sadly, in spite of a valiant go last summer, I have not finished. (So many books, so little time.) Why I didn’t stick with it, is beyond me. His writing is a joy to read, and his message resonates with my soul.

This morning, I discovered that I had a long-unvisited browser tab open to an Time article by him (How America’s Elites Lost Their Grip) which is worth reading for his main thesis (that we are at the cusp of an Overton-window shift that is making possible an era of reforms challenging late stage hyper-capitalism) but also shows what a spectacular writer he is.

To my eye, his brilliance is his ability to weave stories into the substance of his points. But the language he uses to construct the stories is a marvel. Here are some snippets (emph added) from his Time article.

History is the story of conditions that long seem reasonable until they begin to seem ridiculous.

or

It seemed to come as a surprise to Bezos that … many weren’t excited by … giving his company a few billion dollars in tax breaks that wouldn’t be available to a regular Joe starting a business.

or

Many others … had bolder-faced names, but McGlashan was significant because…

or

… for you, that may be a big fine. For Facebook, it was such a feathery tickle …

or

… resulting in Sackler wings and institutes and centers … that allowed the grim machinery of drug peddling to grind on…

or

what Epstein revealed was … systemic rot in our culture—especially at our universities, which have become drive-through reputational laundromats.

or

Peak billionaire may be a billionaire deciding to … and then running against a maybe–billionaire…

Reputational laundromats. Yow, are we having fun, yet? Even my spell checker does a double-take on that. Oh my.

“Where’s your brother?” I asked Izzy.

She had been barking at the front door and then barking at the back. When the frantic cacophony dissipated, I realized that Charlie was no longer in his bed by the fireplace that we never use. Loud noises startle him, and her barking certainly qualifies.

Izzy didn’t answer my question.

“Where’s your brother?” I repeated. And I began a scan of the house.

Down the hallway? No. Under the table by the door? No. 

You see, in his senescence Charlie frequently falls into reverie. And with his permanently dislocated hips, he frequently gets trapped. Trapped under things. Trapped in corners. I figured he was trapped in reverie somewhere. But where?

“Where’s your brother?” Izzy remained silent.

Trapped under the dining room chairs? No. Standing behind the philodendron in the dining room? No. Under the rocking chair? No.

“He must be in the closet,” I said.

I went into the master bedroom — the only room with an open door, all of the other doors closed to shorten searches like this one. I looked into the walk-in closet. There he was, in the darkness, motionless, staring into the darkerness under the hanging clothes.

“Don’t worry Izzy,” I said. “I found him just where we thought he would be.”

I walked up to Charlie slowly and stroked his back. Startled out of his reverie, he jerked his head around to look at me. I picked him up and carried him outside to have him wander instead around the backyard in the sun. He did this until he was ready to come back in and settle back down in his bed by the fireplace that we never use. And he will lie there until his sister starts her barking again.