“Do you travel a lot or are you just unlucky?” The woman in the seat next to me asked. Well I’m alive, I thought, so I guess you could consider that lucky. I did tell her that every flight I’ve been on recently has had some sort of incident—whether it was getting stranded in Atlanta, getting food poisoning in L.A., or missing my flight because I arrived at the airport 5 minutes too late.

This morning I got to the airport 40 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off. When I got to the check-in kiosk, it said I was too late and that I could fly only on standby. The people who checked in right in front of me got on, so I just missed the cut-off time. That’s pretty typical for me; I’m either barely on time or barely late. In a family of perfectly punctual people, I’ve tested my loved ones’ patience most of my life.

I wanted to carry my small suitcase on the plane with me, but I found out that it was barely too big. Again, barely! Why would a manufacturer make a suitcase size that is barely too big to carry on? It seems they would either make a huge one to check or one small enough to carry on the plane. At this point, I was seriously annoyed. As I checked the suitcase, I asked the man behind the ticket counter what flight my suitcase would get on. “Your standby flight, ma’am,” he said.

“So if I don’t get on, my luggage will get there ahead of me?”

“That’s right,” he answered.

So I checked the bag and headed for the security line. Once in line, I realized I forgot to tag my new suitcase with my name and address. I hoped that the ticket stub in my hand would be sufficient in case my suitcase got lost. There is a bar code on it. Wouldn’t they know everything about me from that?
When I got to the gate, I stood in line to see if I could get a seat without having to wait. After standing in line for 20 minutes, the lady behind the counter told me I was at the wrong gate, despite what the printed receipt said. So I rushed to the gate she told me to go to. It turned out that she gave me the correct gate for my Chicago flight, but that didn’t explain why the screen said Kona. After standing in line again, I still had to wait until every passenger with a boarding pass boarded before I would have any clue as to whether or not I would be on this flight.

I called my sister to tell her I had no idea when or if I would be coming for our family reunion. I could hear in her voice that I was testing a loved one’s patience once again. She sounded so disappointed. Just as we were commiserating, my name was called. “Oh, there’s my name! I made it!” I told her.

I was just happy to have a seat on the plane. Of course, it was a middle seat and way in the back. But I sat between two very nice people who asked me endless questions about their cats, once they found out what I do for a living. So I guess you could say I’m a pretty lucky traveler.