I read in the paper yesterday...

Sunday night I went to bed saying to myself, "I have to get up at 5, I have to get up at 5." This usually works - I have an alarm clock built into my head, and it is fairly reliable. I haven't set a real alarm clock in ten years. I woke up at four AM yesterday, and then at 4:15. And then at 5:20. Yikes!

I rushed into the shower, and got myself downstairs as fast as I could. My wife had told me she would drive me to the airport. I went to wake her up, and I couldn't. Just as I started to get alarmed, she awoke with a jolt. Sleepily (with me following along guiltily) she went down to the car. It was so cold that Bob (our car) wouldn't start. She just looked at me and threw her hands up. I rushed upstairs called a cab, and drained my wife of all her change - we had enough, but barely. The cab came about five to six, and got me to the airport at about 6:10. As I struggled into the terminal building, I saw that the Rapidair desk was full up. The self-service boarding pass terminals are a quick way to get through, but as I went to go to them, I saw there was even a lineup for these. And a confusing lineup - people would be lined up behind one, and other people would lunge into the freed-up spots at other ones. I finally decided to play New Yorker, and aggressively lurched into one of them, and got my boarding pass.

Down at the airport's security screen, there was a huge, huge lineup. I looked on in annoyance as one fellow, who obviously thought he was more important than the rest of us because, well, he was flying on an airplane, decided to barge several rows into the line before someone stopped him and held him in place. He had managed to pass in front of me and a hundred other people, though. I soon found out the reason there was such a huge line, as the time available to me to catch my plane dwindled down. The rent-a-cops were being particularly fastidious this day. As I went through they made me take off my coat, my suit jacket, my tie pin, and take out my laptop. I always hate all the crap they put you through now (curse you Bin Laden, you idiot!) Then as I went through the screening device I beeped. Wonderful.

Soon some woman had me un-buckling my pants, while I tried not to blush. Mercifully, I was finally free to reassemble myself and my belongings, and scutter off with what remained of my patience and dignity. I went and grabbed a newspaper just as they called the flight to board. I got the middle seat, which is objectively the worst seat, but I was happy simply to have made it aboard. The plane passed through the de-icer, setting us back a bit, but I wasn't going to quarrel with that. Arriving alive (or at all) is preferable to the alternative. I said my customary pre-flight prayer and off we were, into the sky.

As we ascended into the sky, I got out the paper. A leader caught my eye, and I turned to the article on page A9. The article proclaimed that Monday, January 24, 2005 had been scientifically determined to be the worst day of the year. "This will make the rest of the day easier," I thought. As things progressed and awful things happened, I realized, it was just the fault of this scientifically condemned day!

Sure enough, things would happen, but I took on a certain bemused attitude about it, even as I continued, no doubt, to appear quite grumpy. A few minutes later, as the food carts were rolling down the aisle, the plane lurched downward, and the seatbelt signs came on. The flight attendants began to roll the carts to the back, and the guy in front of me says, "What about my coffee?" (which he had not yet in fact even been offered.) The attendant politely told him that the captain had signaled the seatbelt sign and that we were landing. He muttered something I didn't catch, and she said in response simply, "Short flight." The guy in front of me muttered 'short flight' repeatedly in that kind of annoying mimicry men sometimes do of women. He did this to the woman sitting beside him, whom he'd been hitting on much of the flight.

When the plane landed, the captain announced that we couldn't pull into the terminal, because, well, they hadn't finished building the terminal! There were only so many spots to deplane. So the plane sat on the tarmac for half an hour. The guy in front of me muttered 'short flight' in his ridiculous mimic voice a few more times, griping about how they could have used this time to serve him his coffee. I could have handled the wait, but listening to low quality sarcastic derision for a half hour was beginning to get insufferable, and I sighed audibly. The lady behind me smiled compassionately at me and said, "Two months ago, the plane was delayed for two days and I had to find a hotel. It can be worse than this."

Grateful for the distraction from mimicry man, I smiled and replied, "Yes, I had something like that happen to me here five years ago. The airline said that there were holes in the runway. I ended up living in the airport that night." I thought for a second, and realized it had actually been ten years - was I going senile?

She smiled and said, "See, it can be worse!"

"You're right; this is average," I said. "I fly in every two weeks. I'm late every time."

As we marched off the plane and into the arrivals area, I saw mimicry man talking to the woman and some of her friends who were expecting her. Had I been mistaken, and did he know her?

On the flight home, I was in the middle seat again. But nobody ever claimed the window. I slid over, and looked contentedly down on the glimmering lights of Trenton and Belleville, near where my parents live on Lake Ontario. I remembered how in Judaism a new day begins at sundown, and not midnight. Perhaps this worst day was done. I hadn't quite passed the test with flying colours - I had been irritable and cynical that morning. But I got through it. And it only gets better from here.