brutal

That Paris-Milan flight was normal once it began, but a circus getting started, which took about five more hours after my previous post. About 4 or 5 people became involved in theatrical shouting fights with each other and with AirFrance personnel. A half-dozen police officers showed up at the gate, and they held three people off for questioning and may never have let them get on. One of them was a wildly aggressive shouting Italian woman with an infant in her arms, who was one of the primary instigators of the fight. Her male companion was also part of the problem and was questioned further by police, as was her male companion’s enemy in the fight, a rude low-grade businessman who needlessly shoved past me and others at several moments when we were already moving out of the way for him. A pox on all their houses.

When I tried to board the flight, my reservation had somehow been cancelled. It sounded like a nightmare scenario about to unfold, but they managed to get me a new seat quickly enough.

In the end, I arrived in Cairo exactly when expected, but having slept on the floor of Malapensa Airport rather than in a hotel as the original itinerary allowed. The only reason I’m on campus is because I need to teach The Parallax View in two hours.

Amazingly, my luggage did arrive on time, so there’s one expected headache that never materialized.

One thing that always amazes me is how long a two-week trip can be. For a few minutes you struggle to regain basic life skills needed in your home environment. For example, my wireless mouse didn’t work when I turned on the office computer. There is a trick I always use for fixing that, but I had forgotten the trick after two weeks without using it.

The first time I moved away from Chicago, I came back only about 10 months later. And even 10 months was enough for me to have forgotten the order of the major east-west streets on the North Side. I really couldn’t remember the relative position of Montrose, Lawrence, Addison, etc., even though that’s the ABC’s of Chicago life and I had already lived there for several years.

There are all kinds of temporary skills we pick up over the years and then lose and forget about. How to jiggle the keys in a specific lock to open it. How to get to a certain airport at certain times of day. I think any of us would be shocked and delighted to read a personal encyclopedia of all the skills we once had but have now forgotten.