In 1992 we spent the summer in Germany. I
remember a silly song I made up to drive my Oma nuts, or, to get what I
wanted. It was in horrible German, but to me it was as catchy as a Kenny Logins song.
“Wir gehen fort zum der stadt und ich kriegs ein Oering!” I sung out
over and over all morning until Oma took me to the Downtown Kitzingen
Jeweler. I don’t know why I wanted
jewelry in my left earlobe, but I had to have it. And I got it.
I don’t think mom and dad were consulted on this either.
Every night Oma was faithful in rubbing
schnapps on my earlobe to prevent infection.
I expected it to be a big deal to my parents when we got back home but I
was disappointed! It was new, but it was
as if I just had a new haircut. Maybe I
should have gotten a tattoo?
I remember some kids in school calling me
a “fag” for getting an earring. They
claimed left was gay. I was firm in my
defense. “Nuh uh! Left is Right, right is wrong!” I’d stop wearing the stud
within a year. A few years later I was
messing around and stuck one of my mom’s earrings back in there. It hurt a little bit. I still had a hole. I did not however, rub alcohol on it.
I lost flesh in my ear that summer, but
it wasn’t on a plane. My sister,
brother, and I worked together in concert to convince Oma to get us a Game
Boy. They had come out a few years prior,
but we didn’t have one. The clincher was
that unlike regular Nintendo, The Gameboy was not region specific. A German game boy would work in the US with
games bought in the US. Our Gameboy came with Tetris and we got Battle Toads
and Darkwing Duck. The storylines were
tricky to follow, being in German and all.
We got good mileage out of it.
Johnathan was too young to play but he had his turns. I mastered Tetris. Darkwing Duck was tricky. But Battletoads was a bastard. I never made it past the speederbike level. But I was determined to defeat it
on the plane. That didn’t happen
though. Much to my chagrin I never
played the game again after the flight. Apparently,
we lost it on the plane. It pissed me
off something fierce. Now we only had
two games. I don’t remember my parents ever
buying us a Game Boy game. How could we
lose it though? Did it fall out onto the
floor? Why couldn’t we have lost
Darkwing Duck? 27 years later and I’m
still bitter.
Eight years after that sad loss on the
plane, Johnathan and I went to Germany and there was something else lost on the
flight back. This was my first trip without my sister. I had to be in charge. I had to be responsible. As outlined in that old post, my virginity
was not lost.
My brother was nine and I was
seventeen. On our flight back, other
than avoiding the girl I was supposed to escort, there was nothing
eventful. I had grabbed a couple of barf
bags from the seatbacks in front of us and stored them in our carry on. It was a stupid keepsake, but I thought it
would be cool to have as a joke. Come
toward the end of the flight as we circled DFW my brother told me, “Bubba, I don’t
feel very good.” And that’s another
thing. I hated when Johnathan called me “Bubba.” I always felt it was hillbilly. My whole family called him “Jon-Jon” except
me. And he appreciated that. But still, he’d call me “Bubba.” But anyway, he turned green. I reached for the barf bag in the seat back,
but it was gone! Oh no! I reached below our seat for the carry on
with the bag and splat! Johnathan hurled
on the floor in front of us. The person
sitting across from us on the other side of the aisle looked on in
disgust. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. We were about to land. I grabbed a blanket and covered the throw
up. We got off the plane and some poor
bastard had to clean up the mess. My
brother lost his lunch. But I had a
couple barf bags.
Yeah, they weren’t as cool as I thought
they’d be. Just a papery plastic bag
with a twist tie thingy. They weren’t
useless though. Within a year or so I
gave them to my dad. They were awesome
for him. For a while it wasn’t uncommon
for him to hyperventilate. He used those
bags to breath in. Worked wonders.
In 2008 I brought my fiancée to Germany
to show her off to my family. In 2012 I wanted to do the same with my first-born son Julian. I wished Oma would have been able to meet him,
but she passed away while my wife was pregnant.
He was almost a year old and was loved by all he met. After our vacation was over Kharla wanted to
get some ibuprofen. We went to a
magazine shop and asked for some, but they did not sell them. German law forbade a non-pharmacy from selling
such items. We thanked the store clerk
and bought a soda, a few magazines and a useless head rest. I asked Kharla to take our Euro’s and trade
them at an exchange kiosk while I did something I don’t remember.
Halfway through our ten-hour flight to Chicago
I looked in the bag with our stuff from the magazine shop. Along with the headrest, the drink, and
magazines I had a surprise. 150
euros! I took the money out and
admonished my wife. Why didn’t she
exchange that? That was like $175! She defended herself insisting that she did. I looked in the bag again to see if there was
more money. There wasn’t. But there was an airport employee badge. Crap.
It took us a moment and from what we could figure was that the clerk at
the magazine shop accidentally put somebody’s stuff in our bag. We could not remember if there was somebody
else at the shop that looked like the ID. We felt that the money must belong
to the person who the ID belonged to. We
had no idea when, if ever, we’d be back to Frankfurt International
Airport.
We didn’t know what to do so we flagged
down a flight attendant. We explained
what happened and she was a little confused.
We told her it wasn’t ours. Can
she please get that to a security person or anybody when she gets back to Frankfurt? She thanked us and took the items and that was
that.
But it wasn’t. A gentleman came back an hour later and offered
us alcoholic beverages, but we declined.
“No thank you, we don’t drink. We
didn’t earn that money, it would not be right to keep it. And we don’t want the person who the ID
belongs to get in even more trouble.” He thanked us for our honesty and that
was that.
But it wasn’t. The gentleman came back and gave us vouchers
for $150 to spend on Sky Mall. We were
stunned. We thanked him and picked out a
couple items. It made us feel good. We were just doing what we felt was
right. And we hoped most people would do
the same. We were surprised by how surprised the crew were.
I don’t fly often. Maybe around two dozen flights in my 37
years. Each one is still an event to
me. Long transatlantic flights in
particular would be memorable. I
remember vividly these handful of events.
As awesome it is to fly, little things can stick out so much.
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