From the Slow Lane: My favorite Kardashian
Late last month, we headed to
St. Croix. The two flights to get there — one from New York to Miami, the other from Miami to St. Croix — were uneventful, but our return trip, smack into the middle of the October snowstorm, turned into a white-knuckle flyer’s worst nightmare.
The leg from St. Croix to Miami went fine and while we waited to board our flight to LaGuardia, I noticed a pretty, young woman who looked like one of the Kardashians talking with airport personnel. I’m not sure which of the Kardashians I thought she was because they all look alike to me but she was tall and voluptuous and wore black thigh-high stiletto boots, black tights, a black turtleneck and an electric yellow shirt tied tight right under her ample assets. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail longer than a pony’s tail and she had thick eyelashes that fluttered like butterfly wings. Dangling from around her neck on a rhinestone-studded lanyard was an employee’s ID badge. It was fun to watch her and even more fun watching other people watch her. I assumed everyone in the world knows who the Kardashians are but when I asked my husband, “Doesn’t she look like a Kardashian?” he said, “A what?”
Okay, so not everyone.
Our seats were next to the Kardashian who was even prettier close up and who turned out to be a chatterbox named Sue.
As we got underway, the pilot said it was snowing in New York and we’d be there in less than three hours. Our seat mate, who did not look like a “Sue” and who I thought of as “my Kardashian,” said that she hadn’t seen snow in 10 years. She was an airline employee who worked as a gate attendant in Orlando. As excited as she was about the snow, she was scared because she had never flown before.
When the drink cart came around, a flight attendant spotted the ID badge resting on my Kardashian’s assets and passed her a handful of those little bottles of vodka, which she dumped into her purse except for the one she emptied into her plastic glass of cranberry juice.
Fifteen minutes later she was sound asleep.
Then came the dreaded announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot. I’ve got good news and bad news.”
The bad news was that Newark and Kennedy airports were closed because of snow, but LaGuardia was still letting planes land. That was the good news. “Let’s hope our luck holds out,” the pilot said and promised to keep us posted.
The buzz of conversations in the cabin woke the sleeping Kardashian, and when I repeated the pilot’s message she said, “I knew I shoulda took a bus!”, poured herself another vodka and went back to sleep.
Our luck didn’t hold out. We circled high above the clouds for almost an hour, waiting for the weather to break so we could land, until the pilot said, “Sorry about the detour folks, but we’re headed for Dulles to refuel.”
My Kardashian was upset. “Texas!” She said. “Why are we going all the way to Texas? I don’t wanna go to Texas!”
I tried to assure her that we were not going to Texas.
“Then why did the pilot say we’re going to Dallas for fuel, then?”
“Dulles,” I told her, “Dulles in Virginia, not Dallas in Texas.” Relieved, she went back to sleep.
It was snowing like crazy when we landed at Dulles and I was glad we were able to get off the plane. I went immediately in search of food. Sue, like a real Kardashian, headed straight for the shops. Two hours later we were back on the plane, but the pilot said that we couldn’t get underway until we’d pushed back from the gate and were de-iced.
“De-iced. What does that mean, de-iced?” My Kardashian asked. “That’s bad, isn’t it? Oh, how I wish I took a bus,” she said as she dug through her purse for another bottle of vodka.
We de-iced and took off, but it was a bumpy flight and our plane bounced off every snow cloud between Dulles and LaGuardia.
Eight hours after we’d first boarded for our three-hour flight the pilot said, “We’ve been given permission to land and you’ll know when we do, because we’re coming in on a short runway so stay buckled up.”
It was a kidney-rattling ride, a rough landing and a near sudden stop but when we realized that we had lived through it, hundreds of people on the plane burst into spontaneous applause. My Kardashian hugged me and said, “This was just like being in a movie, but next time I’m takin’ the Greyhound.”
Me too.
