THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2023 51 is talking to her. Even from a distance I can see him gesturing to her and to himself. He’s talking to the dog, telling her of his woes and the pros and cons of being a luggage handler at a busy airport. It’s actually a little charming. I get it. She has such a sympathetic face. It’s part of the reason that I’m watching from the airport window and feeling only relief. I don’t think my clothes or computer will meet me in the States, but she will. I don’t imagine she’ll be grateful. In fact, I know she won’t. She’ll ignore me and go find a piece of furniture she can call her own, back to me for the trouble I’ve put her through. Fair enough. Tickets in hand, we board. There is more. About how we got rerouted to Los Angeles because Las Vegas was two degrees too hot, and then we drove across the desert ... how there was a long debate at 4 a.m. about the hinges of an Airbus A330 versus a Boeing 717 … how at the very last minute we had to scramble to find a heretofore- unmentioned physical letter of approval from a partner airline … how we missed our flight to Seattle because the agent spent an hour looking for the correct kind of “up” arrow sticker … I’ll spare you the details because perhaps you know my story; you knew it before I had even finished. Perhaps you are a veteran of these things and chide my dramatics. Perhaps you are wise and saw the calmer paths that I stubbornly chose to ignore. Perhaps I have frightened you. Good. The rules are not quite knowable, not even by those who wrote them. Buy your tarot decks early, friends. Call early, and then burn your incense. Dig up the new regulations, and make sure your cypher is accurate. Be tenacious and as unrelenting as a glacier, and, for the love of all things holy, call the night before. n The rules are not quite knowable, not even by those who wrote them.
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