Memory Lane (VIII)

(It's been a long time...I shouldn't have left you. It's just that starting these at the beginning of every month has grown increasingly difficult, for whatever reason. After the first paragraph though it was a piece of cake, and I hope it shows. Enjoy.)

After landing in Tokyo, we grabbed a bite to eat at an airport restaurant. My wife was flabbergasted that she actually had to pay for kimchi. 200 yen! It's a cruel world out there, kiddo.

My lack of sleep began to catch up with me, and while waiting to board the plane to Chicago I only wanted a nice bed to lie in. I have this thing about sleeping while sitting. Maybe I've mentioned it. Anyway, it's impossible for me to fall asleep in a sitting position. Maybe I should see a shrink.

I was also as bored as a palm reader at a podiatrists convention (I don't know what that means, either). No music to listen to, no books or magazines. I had to settle for conversation with my wife. I should have brought along Mad Libs*.

After 2 or 3 hours we were able to board. This was 8 months after September 11, 2001, and it was pretty darn easy upon entering the aircraft to spot at least one federal agent. Tough looking mother, that dude. The flight was longer than John Holmes, pleasant save for some turbulence (would people have no trouble riding in elevators if they shook considerably as you rode up and down? I doubt it) and the fact that I was as tired as a one-legged man riding a bicycle uphill (again, no idea).

One comical incident occurred halfway through the flight. I guess I have poor circulation or something, because I get cramps in my legs very easily, and whenever I take long haul flights I have to periodically get up and stretch them. This happens to me at movies, too, but I can bear it. 12 hours? No fucking way. Anyway, returning from a trip to the lavatory, I took my seat, put on my headphones in order to continue watching Legally Blond (aside: maybe it was the euphoria I felt from either returning home after 2 years away or the Scopolamine patch I was wearing, or both, but I remember that movie being a lot better than I thought it'd be, in a kitschy way of course), and grabbed my wife's hand. Correction: I grabbed what I believed to be my wife's hand. Turned out I mistakenly sat down in the unoccupied seat directly behind my own, and the hand I grabbed belonged to a young Chinese woman. It was pretty embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the time in the supermarket when I goosed a woman who I thought was my wife. That's a true story. And it was so an honest mistake.

I apologized to the Chinese woman, not sticking around long enough to see whether she understood me. Funny thing is though, she looked pretty happy. I have that effect on people.

Other than that, the only incident of note was that there was a thirty-something nerdy looking gentleman who had a Palmcorder and was apparently recording the in-flight movies. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, but it wasn't until the 3rd movie (Ocean's Eleven, in case you care) was almost over that one of the stews

(CHICKEN OR BEEF?)

asked the guy what he was doing. And in a very polite tone, I might add. That's probably because he didn't look like an Arab or anything**. The guy told the stew

(I SAID CHICKEN OR BEEF, MA'AM)

that he bought his Palmcorder in Tokyo and was just testing it out. Yeah, right. But the stew

(NO, MA'AM, WE DON'T HAVE FISH. CHICKEN OR BEEF?)

left him alone after that and the guy continued to, for whatever reason, record.

After 12 hours or so we landed in Hell, aka Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Because my wife didn't have a visa to visit the US, she and a group of similarly visaless passengers were summoned and herded off to god knows where***. So they wouldn't, you know, enter the country illegally. Like that's such a big problem these days****.

Ahem. Because this was O'Hare, possibly the busiest airport in the world, and we were only 8 months removed from those hellbent fuckers using airplanes as cruise missiles, the lines at customs and baggage claim were ridiculous. And I've waited in line to ride the White Water Canyon at Paramount Canada's Wonderland, so I know what I'm talking about. To tell you the truth, by this point everything was becoming ethereal. I actually felt high. If I had read the Scopolamine pamphlet carefully, I would have conceded that that was indeed the case. Besides my increasing sense of irreality, I was also as thirsty as that skeleton in The Last Unicorn. After finally claiming my bags to take to the Air Canada desk in Terminal Whateverthefuck, I stopped at a kiosk to buy a bottle of water (2 bucks for water! Hip-hop hooray). Problem was -- and there's always a problem, usually a dozen of 'em -- the kiosk only accepted US currency, and all I had was Canadian and Korean. Thankfully, an American woman (don't start) bought the water for me. She wouldn't even accept the 27 dollars Canadian I offered her, what I believed was the going exchange rate. The kidness of strangers, boy.

I drank the thing in about 2 gulps.

Then I headed over to Canadian customs to recheck my bags. One thing which I had been a little worried about ever since Incheon was the Playstation 2 in my backpack. I was worried it might, in an X-ray, look like a bomb. Reliably, as my bag went through the Tunnel of Love, one of the security guys shouted "hey! Just a minute, sir."

I turned around, my sphincter tightening in fear of what I imagined might soon come near it.

"You got a Playstation in that bag?"

"Yes."

"Alright."

And that was that. I should point out that my noticeably un-Arablike features indubitably saved me a lot of grief. And rectal probing*****.

Afterwards, I took a seat and waited for my flight to board. I was worried about my wife, but was told upon inquiring not to worry; she'd be there.

I think an hour passed, maybe two. No sign of my fiancee. Then the plane began boarding. No fiancee. I was again told not to worry, and handed my ticket over and got on the plane. I waited in my seat. No fiancee. I looked inquiringly at the stewardess. No acknowledgment. Finally, just as I was about to get up and run off, like Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, in search of my (kidnapped? held prisoner?) wife, a second stewardess informed me that my wife was not going to be able to make the flight, but that she was "guaranteed" a seat on one departing 40 minutes later.

So I got to sit sandwiched between a college girl who looked uncomfortable as hell -- it probably didn't help that I was unshaven and no doubt smelled less than pleasant, and that I had maniacally asked her "so, why were you in Chicago?" after espying her Canadian passport -- and an elderly Korean lady who couldn't speak a lick of English.

The Canadian chick was no fun, so I ended up spending most of the flight conversing, in my pidgin Korean, with the elderly woman. Turned out she was visiting Toronto as a member of some kind of Falun Gong awareness group. I thought she was going to give me a whole spiel about Falun Gong philosophies and try to convert me, but she was really very sweet and only mentioned that she was trying to enlighten people about the Falun Gong's plight in China. How she planned to do that in Canada without understanding even the most basic English, I don't know. I helped her fill out her customs card; this woman didn't even know what "name" meant. But that's what she said.

About 20 minutes prior to landing, the TVs turned on and I was treated to the CBC evening news with Peter Mansbridge. Peter fucking Mansbridge. Dig it. Breaking the cloud cover, my heart leapt, knowing that in less than 10 minutes I would be back home, standing on my native soil.

After disembarking and clearing customs for the final time, I was faced with a dilemma: my wife's flight was allegedly to arrive in 30-40 minutes, but it was already 8:20 and my flight was scheduled to arrive at 7:30. My family was waiting to greet me; what would they think if I failed to emerge from the arrival gate? It wouldn't have been a problem for me to exit, see my folks and wait for my wife, except that her bags were sent on board the plane in which I arrived, and I was pretty sure she didn't know it. What would she think if she arrived and her bags weren't there?

I probably should have stayed, but by then I was hallucinating (really; I'd been awake for over 48 hours, and that Scopolamine patch probably didn't help) and needed to sit down and let saner minds (though that's debatable, har har) take over. I paid a porter 20 bucks (!) to take my and my wife's bags out, and met my father, mother and sister (my brother was at the time living in Thunder Bay -- home of the Thunder Bay Thunder -- and couldn't make it).

One hour passed, then two. Still no sign of Wifey, and I had absolutely no way to tell if her flight had arrived or not. Sure, I was told it would land 40 minutes after my own, but how the hell was I to know that was true? I didn't have a flight number or anything. For all I knew, my wife could have still been in Chicago. We inquired again and again whether a five-foot-nothing young Korean woman was waiting at customs, but the people at Pearson, and most airports for that matter, are about as useless as tits on a bull.

I think we waited, in total, 2 and a half hours. Then my wife finally, miraculously emerged from the arrival gate. I'd like to say she was a sight for sore eyes, but the truth is she looked madder than a cobra whacked with a bamboo stick. Much of that look was for the fine folks at O'Hare Int'l, but part of it was reserved for me, because I took her bags out, leading her to believe they were lost.

She didn't stay mad long, however, and after we all got reacquainted with one another, we hopped in my folks' new mini-van and headed home to Burlington.

Then the next morning at 5am we headed back to Pearson. Because my wife, the night prior inquiring as to the whereabouts of her "missing" bags, had left her passport, and wallet containing over 4000 dollars cash, on the Information Desk counter.

* I'm being facetious, natch.

** I'm being sarcastic, natch.

*** When we returned to Korea 7 months later, I would find out. It's a room with very little security that one can come and go from as one pleases. Which reinforces my belief that the temporary visa thing is nothing but a scam.

**** See **

***** See *