{"id":4802,"date":"2019-09-02T09:28:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T07:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4802"},"modified":"2019-09-02T09:28:28","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T07:28:28","slug":"a-reason-to-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4802","title":{"rendered":"A Reason to Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Courtesy of Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m about to get on my flight from Philadelphia to Prague. Besides the fact that I\u2019m leaving my family, everything is grand. I have had two beers which totaled $23. But the bartender was a nice guy and I got to watch football before being shipped back to a place where football is played by a bunch of guys kicking a ball and falling down in tears at a nearby gnat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m used to being annoyed at the airport. People seem to\nleave a great deal of their IQ points in the car that dropped them off. But\ntoday, everything is smooth. The lines are curiously short, nobody has tried to\ncut in front of me in said lines, and everyone has been very nice. Hm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they begin boarding, I decide I would like to see if a\nchange to my seat is possible. I am a middle seat and boy am I ticked about\nthat. I am the only person in line. I approach the woman. I smile. The two beers\nI\u2019ve had were made exponentially stronger by their price.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAny chance I can be moved to an aisle?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she looks I explain that I don\u2019t really mind if they can\u2019t\nmove me, it\u2019s not a big deal. I am lying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell sir, they\u2019re going to charge you to change seats\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh.\u201d I am already shrugging and raising my eyebrows to show\nher how cool I am with that news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut,\u201d she says, casting a glance hither and yon, \u201cit\u2019s not\na full flight. The aisle seat next to you is empty, so just sit there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, thank you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can see instantly that the plane will not be full. The\ngroups are tiny. The man boarding the flight has to double up groups 3 and 4. He\nlooks a little embarrassed, as if he\u2019s having a party nobody has shown up to. The\nguy in front of me is roughly sixteen feet tall. He turns to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMan, am I missing something? Nobody\u2019s here.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are on the plane in a matter of minutes. I am so relaxed\nI forget to do my flying ritual wherein I kiss the plane and say a little poem\nto her. I take one step backwards off the plane and do that. But it\u2019s a bit\nforced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sixteen foot tall guy is sitting directly in front of the\naisle seat in which I\u2019d like to switch. He\u2019s already got his seat leaned as far\nback as it can go. If I sit in the seat behind him I\u2019ll be able to braid his\nhair on the way to Prague. Aha! Something to be annoyed about! The flight\nattendant sees this conundrum and stops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh\u2026\u201d she scans a tablet. \u201cSir, why don\u2019t you go up to seat\n12C. It\u2019s an aisle and it\u2019s free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The rest of the flight goes better than planned. I am in a\nrow of four seats with one other guy. We lounge, taking over the free seats\nnext to us. We take off early. I am eating and drinking wine in an hour. I put\nmy chair back (nobody\u2019s behind me, so no braiding worries) and I watch movies.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An hour into Harry Potter. \u201cSir, would you care for some\nmore wine?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inner answer: Oh you guys are trying to provoke me now, aren\u2019t\nyou?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outer answer: \u201cOh yes, please, thank you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sleep during the landing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In seven hours I am home. My new place is a 25 minute bus from\nthe airport and the bus drops me off a two minute walk from my house. I greet the\ncat, let her smell me and rub her face on me for an hour of what will be six\nstraight hours of face rubbing. I look in the fridge and become disappointed as\nall people do that neither the cat nor the flat elves have stocked it while I was\naway. I walk to the store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s here that I begin to decline into a heady case of jet\nlag. To boot, the stock guy is doing what he does best, which is stock the\nfloor during the rush times. He has huge crates and pallets all throughout the\nproduce section and he casts dirty looks and head shakes at anyone who has\ntrouble squeezing past him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s right. I knew they wouldn\u2019t disappoint. I begin to\nsweat. I squeeze past the guy and he rolls his eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey jerk, it\u2019s been a month of cheesesteaks and pizza. You wanna\nlay off?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He blinks at me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unmistakable signs of jetlag are encroaching. Slightly feverish,\nsweaty, blinks are lasting a few seconds. I get to the taco section. But the\ntaco section is no longer the taco section. Was there ever a taco section? The\ncoffee isn\u2019t where it used to be. In the one month I have been gone, the store\nhas been completely renovated and its contents switched around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I give up on what I want and just buy a random assortment of\nthings that sort of look edible. For the first time in my life rice cakes seem\nreasonable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I get to the self-checkout, I am drunk with the\nlag. The checkout stops its progress a number of times while I try to make a \u00bc ounce\nbag of pepper weigh something. The sun is beating down on me now, my underwear has\nlodged itself somewhere inside of me in what seems to be a retroactive wedgie. That\u2019s\nit. That\u2019s it. I knew I\u2019d finally have a reason to be annoyed if I just waited\nlong enough. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of Getty Images I\u2019m about to get on my flight from Philadelphia to Prague. Besides the fact that I\u2019m leaving my family, everything is grand. I have had two beers which totaled $23. But the bartender was a nice guy and I got to watch football before being shipped back to a place where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/getty-images.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1fs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4804,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4802\/revisions\/4804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}