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I was awoken from my slumber by a small nudge. I sat up and,
after wiping the stickiness from my eyes, looked straight at my fully
awake mother. I slowly let my head drift down and to the left,
catching a glimpse of a glowing red 9:30 as my head hit the pillow
again. The time for our trip to Philadelphia and New York to begin
was at hand. After some more increasingly frustrated comments from my
mother, I finally lifted myself out of bed. We piled our luggage into
the car and left the house. On the way to the airport we stopped at 1
of 12 Burger Kings and picked up some egg McMuffins. We would have a
layover in Atlanta (Delta's Hub) before we met up with Dad in
Philadelphia. We got our luggage checked and received our boarding
passes. The flight, of course, was delayed. This had been happening
alot with Delta lately (My dad travels every week), and Mom started
into her whining, which really didn't end till she got home 6 days
later. Once they did board us, they decided to let us linger on the
runway for awhile, letting us grasp at the hope that we would be
taking off soon. You know it won't happen, and you start imagining
the pilot announcing over the intercom that we were 37th in line. We
eventually took off, destined to be 1 hour and 15 minutes late to
Atlanta, effectively cutting our layover to 15 minutes. My showers
our longer than that!
Once in Atlanta, we found that our flight was only about 14
gates down. The plane was cramped (as usual) and that was becoming
more of a problem for both me and my mom, as she liked to steal a bit
of my seat when I was smaller. At least this time, unlike on the
flight here, my "window seat" actually had a window. That,
a PCGamer, and my favorite bag of Delta snack mix (Boo-yea! She gave
me two!) were the only things that kept me alive. Thankfully, my
mother had made sure that both flights there and back had me and her
in a two seat side.
We wandered around the Philadelphia airport, calling Dad's
cellphone from each phone we could find. "Trunk busy
signals" Mom kept repeating with a flustered tone and a distant
look, which, were in fact just that. After complaining for awhile in
my usual way, Mom finally let me sit down and eat a personal pizza
from Pizzeria Uno. We finally reach Dad only to find out it will be
another 30 minutes before he gets here. Once finished with our
snacks, we took a horribly long walk, which toward the end, looked
more like a slow, long, shuffle. When we got to the meeting place, we
waited for a while. Mom called Dad again, and it turns out, he had
just beat us there and the cops (read overglorified crossing guards,
or so Dad thought at the time) had shooed him off. And since
Philadelphia Airport is the worst (ed. note: 2nd worst) airport in
the country, he got lost, missed his U-turn, and had to drive a
highway to get to a far away exit, and then get back to the airport
and run the gauntlet again.
It was dark by the time we reached the Philadelphia
museum of Art, and I had just woken up. Mom and I (There! Happy
Mrs.Sapashe?) headed to the door while Dad got the PCDs (Personal
Communication Devices AKA. walki-talkies). We paid for three little
button-things that proved we paid for the button-things, which
magically allowed us access. They had a small assortment of Monets,
VanGoghs, Renoirs, and Pollacks. The masters. Of course, there was
also the assortment of dark, dark, dark, Dutch paintings. And they
were pretty dreary too.
We left the museum at about 8:30, after about half an hour of
my complaining. It was dinner time, so we headed down town for a
quick bite. That was a mistake. With all the one-way streets and
aggressive traffic (hadn't been to New York at the time) it took us
an hour and fifteen minutes to finally find a restaurant that was
open and wasn't covered in barbed and/or razor wire. We settled for a
Wendy's. Our plan of action consisted of Mom and I leaping out of the
car into a roll, while dad gave us cover fire. We would then order
our meal while Dad circled the block, so that when we came out, we
could jump into the car's open door. Well, the ordering and circling
parts were true. Since I was feeling car sick, the rarely ordered
processed chicken product (Chicken nuggets) was a welcomed snack. We
headed back to the room and of course, I wasn't the one that got the
King sized bed. Not only was I forced to fly coach, I had to sleep on
the secret slave bed that they hid in the couch so the child welfare
people can't have a chance to liberate us. I am Spartacus!
Copyright, 2000, All rights reserved
Written entirely by: Jesse
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