Monday, June 25, 2012

A True Confession

Alright, let me just come right out and say this so that I can get it over with because I feel like such a BUFFOON.

Are you ready?

I changed my flight to Florida until next Monday, but I have a perfectly rational reason.

Well….rational for those, who like me, are afraid to fly.

If any of you have been watching the weather report here in the U.S., you probably heard about Tropical Storm Debby which is swirling around the west coast of Florida, but is also affecting the south coast of Florida (where my family lives); causing high winds, horrendous rain and flooding.

Because I never turn on a TV or watch the news, I discovered this yesterday morning when I called my brother Tom to confirm my flight information so that he could pick me up at the airport TODAY.

After we got off the phone, I instantly went online and checked the radar weather report for South Florida and it DID NOT look good. Suddenly, I got a panic feeling in my gut and started hyperventilating. But rather than totally freak out, I logged offline and decided to spend the afternoon sitting in my favorite park communing with nature in the hopes of calming down.

When I got home, I logged back online only to discover (in BRIGHT RED LETTERS) that now the weather report was giving ALERTS of tornado warnings in the area where my family lives for the next 24-hours.

Okay, this is when my panic and hyperventilation kicked into full gear!

I literally paced around my apartment like a chimpanzee in a zoo cage, screeching to myself, “No…I can’t do this…I can’t do this. I cannot get on that plane tomorrow. There is NO WAY.”

And besides being scared, I was pissed. Pissed because I had waited so long to finally get on a plane to visit my family who I haven’t seen in years, only to be met with a tropical storm cutely named, DEBBY, and a possible tornado.

Just for the hell of it, I went online to check the status of my flight to see if the airline was giving any kind of warning about a possible delay or cancellation due to the weather. And sure enough (in BIG RED LETTERS) it said, ALERT: Because of severe weather conditions and for your safety, your flight might be delayed, rerouted or cancelled.

Well….that’s all I needed to hear. I decided to cancel the flight myself.

I called my mother and told her that I could not get on a plane whether it was going to be safe enough to fly or not, because I knew that regardless there would still be a tremendous amount of air turbulence due to the tropical storm and I just didn’t want to put myself through it. And I love my mother because do you know what she said? “I don’t blame you in the least; I wouldn’t want to fly through this weather either. In fact, I told your brother Tom that I wish you would reschedule your flight until the weather is nicer because we're going have nothing but rain here all week.”

So I called the airline and talked to an awesome young lady who I was honest with, “Look, I don’t like to fly to begin with, so I’m not happy about the possibility of flying through a tropical storm or threats of a tornado tomorrow, therefore what are my chances of rescheduling?”  And she was so cool because she said, “Hey…I work for this airline and fly a lot, but if there were threats of storms or tornado's, I’d reschedule too!”

And the most wonderful thing about this is that she was able to reschedule my flight for the exact same time next Monday and issued the same confirmation number.

AND….the airlines only charge me $10.00 to reschedule!

After I got off the phone, I called my mother back and told her the news.

“Great, then it all worked out perfect. And I’ll see you next week, Ronnie!”

So there you have it folks, my true confession.

And please forget that you read my previous post, because I’m only going to repost it on Friday.

*only kidding*

And please pray that Topical Storm Debby blows out to sea by next Monday because I don’t want to have to repost this too...

Epilogue: And somewhere in the recesses of my mind I'm thinking, "Maybe I SHOULD HAVE taken the train!"