Lauren Rist
Professor Andrea Vasconcellos
English 100
25 February 2015
Boarding for Adventure
It was pitch black as my alarm berated me, waking me up to the unfamiliar hotel bed I had been slumbering in. I stubbed my toe on an unknown piece of hotel faux finery, grasped hold of my iPhone 5, and turned off the alarm that read 4:30 a.m. My mood drastically transformed from grouchy and annoyed to giddy and excited as I recollected that today was the day we were moving. My infamous morning grouchiness was nonexistent as I frantically packed last minute items into my matching Jaguar printed luggage set. I took an enormous leap of faith, boarded a plane to Hawaii, and moved to the Big Island on May 25th of 2014. My old life died the night my feet touched the ground in Kona.
I felt unbearably anxious and impatient that morning; however, traveling with a family of five motivated me to reign in that nervous impatience. Waiting on my little sister, Rheanin, to totter along in her first pair of heels, a pair of brown wedges, was pure agony. Nicole, my seventeen year old sister, was being a typical bratty teenager, and her morning grouchiness was obnoxiously obvious. My beloved, tiny mother, Robin, was fussing around to make sure that every last little detail had been attended to like a clucking mother hen. My father, Marvin, ginger and bald-headed, and I met each other’s gaze with identical expressions of exasperation. This was going to be a very long day.
Our pilgrimage began as our party of five loaded ourselves and our twenty bags into the back of our white Chrysler Town & Country rental car to drive to the Oklahoma City airport and catch our 6:15 a.m. flight to the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The process of checking our persons seemed cold and robotic at 5:00 a.m. I remember I felt as if I were going through some sort of cryogenic freezing process, so bizarre a setting the security check seemed this immediately after I had woken up. Our seats were upgraded to first class at no charge because we were all flying under a family member’s standby list. Once we boarded the plane, my entire family got a dose of dust from the Sandman, sending them straight into dream world. I was still so jittery and excited that it would not have been possible for me to sleep. Instead of entertaining an exercise in futility, when the beautiful, auburn-haired flight attendant asked me if I would like some orange juice with my breakfast, I batted my bare eyelashes her way and requested a Jack’s Daniel’s and coke. I watched the night turn from kohl black to the golden-orange of the daytime sky with a cocktail in my hand, and I counted my blessings.
Once we landed in LAX, I began to question the very blessings I had just been feeling so blessed for having. The gods had cursed our family with a nine hour layover in LAX. LAX was my least favorite airport of all airports, and its reputation was confirmed on May 25th 2014. Nicole and I decided to utilize this vast time gap as a chance to primp. We went to the large, gold-flecked, white marble, brightly lit airport bathroom to attend to our hair. My hair was red then, the color of red one typically sees on a Scarlett macaw, and her hair was and still is a beautiful chestnut with natural golden highlights. Together, we began to make use of electric hair tools as we attempted to bully our locks into submission until every hair was in place. Our hair looked fabulous; we figured the waiting time to board our plane to Hawaii must be nearly over by now. As we exited the large, clean airport bathroom, our parents broke the news that only half an hour had passed. As we all began to get a sense of how eerily slow time would move on this nine hour layover, we also noticed that there were no optimal places for a clan of our size to sit together.
We decided we would grab some lunch, hoping a place we could all sit together would open up. I was too nervous to eat, so I did not eat. Instead, I chose to apply my