Berck drove me to work on Wednesday morning of last week so that he could pick me up and go straight to the airport when I got off. I had just finished doing inventory second counts when Laura, the inventory dictatress, paged me to come to her office. She summons me whenever I screw up anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant. I’ve entertained the thought that she might personally hate me. So I hurried over to the send-out office wondering, Great, what have I done now?

“Joanna, your husband is by the front desk…something about needing your house keys.”

I doubled over in laughter. I had locked the apartment door on the way out that morning, and Berck must have only had the remote entry to the car. Yes, he had driven all the way home before realizing this. So he spent two hours driving to start off his day.

One of my coworkers was stocking on the same aisle I was that afternoon and asked when my flight out was that day. Five forty-eight. She stopped what she was doing and stared at me. “Five forty-eight?! Do you think you’ll make it in time? We’re leaving an hour late today!”

So at the two o’clock break I stuck my head in Barry’s office and asked how it was looking today. “Terrible,” answered his assistant Darrell. “They’re not even half way through pulling.” This is indeed terrible.

I reminded Barry when my flight left. “Remind me what you’ve got going on.” Thanksgiving? “Oh, yeah. What time would you feel comfortable leaving?” Berck had warned me that he would physically drag me from the warehouse if I didn’t come out much past three thirty. I said I could probably stay till three forty-five.

I felt bad asking to be let go early, especially since the tiny office was filled with people having a meeting I had interrupted. Laura piped up from a corner, “If you leave at three thirty, it’ll be three forty-five by the time you get to the parking lot. And you need to get to the airport at least two hours ahead of time. Today is the busiest travel day of the year.”

I’m beginning to think Laura actually likes me.

The rest of my crew had to stay until five. The pullers didn’t get to leave until seven. I was in the car heading just down the street to the airport at three thirty-five.

We hurried toward security. And found that we were the only people in line. Then at the gate we discovered that our flight was delayed…to leave at SEVEN. I could have gone back to work. But we’d already paid for parking, so we hunkered down to wait. I found a paper, and we worked the crossword. Then Berck listened to the MP3 player, and I read a book. Wheels up didn’t happen until seven forty-five.

In the meantime, Mom and Dad and my Uncle Dave were trying to leave Dave’s car at a Marta station for us to drive to Highlands, NC, but a guy ran into the car in Atlanta traffic. It took three hours for the police to arrive and assign blame to the other driver.

When my dad got our tickets, he had to use double frequent flier miles to get us out on Wednesday around noon. But when I asked Barry for Wenesday off, he said he couldn’t do it, but candidly told me I was allowed one unexcused absence a year and would just get a nasty write-up. I had decided that’s what I would have to do when Dad called up Delta and was told, “Well, you for five thousand miles LESS you could get first class tickets at five forty-five p.m.” Well, gee, let’s think about that.

So we enjoyed our complimentary vodka and scotch. Berck ate about fifteen Biscoff cookies. In Atlanta we made the quite striking connection to a Marta train headed north. We found Dave’s car without any trouble (it was the only green Mazda with a busted front end). Dad had taped up the bumper, making it look even more pathetic, but keeping the rain out of the headlight.

We finally got into Highlands around three a.m.

Next: Being There!