AIR PAIR

 

May I preface this post by admitting that I have this pesky thing to my reading---I can read upside down and backwards, or both (VERY helpful for reading stories from a book clasped open on my front so the kids can see the pictures).   I used to spend a lot of my time gazing at the ceilings of banks and doctors' offices and such, so as to not get too familiar with the information on desks and teller-windows which was none of my business.  

When my Sis graduated from High School, she asked for a trip with me to see my young SIL, who had just been married a few months, and was WAY homesick at the Air Base in Colorado.   Sil was begging us to come, so we went---we flew out of Memphis that June day  in the 1970s, with a connection from Denver to Colorado Springs.   

(Remember I have this thing about reading stuff without thinking).    So when we approached the high counter to get our tickets, the attendant scanned a typewritten list on a page before him.   I was doing my thing I guess, and unthinkingly reached and put my finger on Sis's name down on the list.  Now, Sis has a rather unusual name (only one she had at the time---she chose for herself way after she married and had children), and our Maiden name is quite unusual in the South, as well.     Agent checked off her name and mine, and so we got our boarding passes, etc., and went to the proper gate to wait.   After perhaps fifteen minutes, we saw a little crowd of three hurrying down the concourse toward our spot--two security guards in uniform and the ticket agent from before, and they came straight to US, very seriously zeroing in on SIS.

"WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" said the agent, and "Show us your ID," from one guard with his hand out, and other hand on his sidearm.   We sort of shakily did--I and my teen charge-for-the-trip, getting a bit nervous from the voices and all those eyes on us, and other folks gathering in the long concourse to take in the show.  My mind was knitting faster than an electrified loom, with "Mother and Daddy are still in the car going home, and no phone and they'll have to drive all the way back and what if. . ."   that kind of quick but useless thinking.  

 We obliged with every credential we had, and all the officials conferred, then ushered us back to the original counter, where stood a red-haired woman we certainly had never seen, a bit irritated and conveying a hand-on-her-hip frown toward us two miscreants-of-whatever-was-happening.   And ONLY THEN did they scan on down the list to find the other EXACT NAME on their manifest.

We've always said we're glad it didn't happen NOW---TSA would have had us cuffed and out the door before we knew what was happening.   Maybe my putting my finger on that upside down list made them suspicious.   

We sat with the formerly irate lady and uncovered a cousin of our Dad's, on his Daddy's side---Grandpa had died when I was so young that we seldom went back to the homeplace, and thus lost track of the generations.  

Any more oddities anyone wants to recount?  There's one more strange happening for this week that defies all odds for both silly and coincidence.  It happened on one of the most interesting, luxurious, fruitful and memorable-in-more-than-one-way trips of my life, also with Sis.