Can I Get An Amen From The Crowd?

A few years ago when my young bride and I lived in Maryland, we had to return to Texas for the funeral of a very caring and kind woman who we loved dearly.  The first flight we could get out of Baltimore for Dallas/Fort Worth didn't leave until about 6pm, so we took off from work a few hours early to beat the traffic and to have time for a bite to eat prior to getting on the plane.  I will be the first to tell you that if and/or when I must fly at night, I'm one of the worst white knuckle flyers God ever put on this earth.  I never had this problem before until I got to be about 35 years old and then it got so bad I had to make some serious life changes when it comes to flying.  With my young bride being a nurse, she got a prescription for Zanax, or as I fondly refer to them as happy pills, from our family doctor specifically for this trip.

There was an enormous summer storm we had to fly through that stretched from the entire eastern seaboard to southern New Mexico and it was loaded with high winds, lightning, thunder and in some areas tornadoes were possible.  Oh joy, oh rapture!  I waited anxiously with bated breath to crawl my big chubby butt on this metal tube of an airplane and bounce around like a Puerto Rican short stop hitting every air pocket imaginable for the next three and half hours.  Luckily for me, and my fellow passengers, my wife had the forethought to give me two Zanax to take while she and I were having a couple of glasses of wine about 30-minutes prior to boarding.  Excellent decision on her part.

We were lucky enough to get our seats upgraded to first class from coach for this trip and man, was I ever glad!  Finally, I would have enough leg room for my 6'4" body and not have to sit at the back of the airplane next to the damned toilet like kitchen help and not have to suffer the results of a fellow passenger porkin' out on boiled eggs and beer at the airport bar!  Sometimes the air flow in that part of the plane is so bad, it caused me to have flash backs from cleaning out livestock stalls and corrals as a kid.  And that's another reason why I joined the Navy, I got tired of smelling horse and cow farts!

There we are, in first class, I'm sitting next to the window looking out into the dark of night, got my headphones on listening to some fantastic Carlos Santana tunes on my CD player and being waited on by a very attentive air line stewardess.  It just can't get any better than this!!!  During the entire three and half hour trip, every time the airplane hit an air pocket...the drummer in Santana's band stepped up the pace of the music and I was rockin' on baby!!!

As to be expected, the circulated air on an airplane does make a person's mouth very dry, so my young bride told the stewardess to "keep the beer coming for my husband until we're preparing to land."  About an hour out of Dallas, the stewardess ask my wife if she and I would like another drink before we start preparing to land.  My wife said yes and to bring me another beer.  At this point the stewardess leaned down close to my wife and said, "Is your husband wearing a catheter?  He has drank all the beer in first class and we're now having to get it from coach, and he hasn't gotten up to pee since getting on the plane."  My wife replied "No, he isn't wearing a catheter, but he will certainly need to find a restroom once we land.  Why do you ask?  Is he causing a problem?" and the stewardess said "No, he isn't a bit of trouble at all.  I've just never seen anyone that can drink that much beer at this altitude and not need to pee."  I got another beer.

OK, so now we've landed at the airport in Dallas; we're with my wife's younger sister who is waiting on her husband John to fly in from a business trip to Chicago and all three of us are sitting in this large empty baggage claim area waiting on John's plane.  We only had about a 30-minute wait for his plane to land and for him to come through the baggage claim door; however, that's a dangerous amount of "free time" for me to have on my hands.  Boredom is not my friend...has never been my friend...and I will find something to entertain myself with, no matter how odd or unusual it may be.

Wwaayy down at the opposite end of this enormous room was a "lonely wheelchair" that was just begging for my attention.  After doing multiple wheelies and racing back and forth in this marvelous mechanical device to entertain myself, under the watchful eye of my wife and her sister I might add, I was told that my brother in-laws plane had landed and would be coming through the doors anytime.  Not being one to pass up an opportunity to embarrass my my brother in-law in public, I sat in the wheel chair and rolled myself over to within just a few feet from the entrance where he would be walking through and could see me.

When the doors swung wide open, I spotted John in the crowd with about 15-20 people in front of him and just as he stepped through those doors, I stood up from the wheel chair with both arms shooting to the sky and said, "John!  I've been healed!  Thank ya' Jesus!  This a miracle!  Just send the fine folks at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma a $100 check donation."  I was flabbergasted at John's refusal to even acknowledge my existence and walked right past me to where our wives were waiting.  When he wouldn't turn around to look at me, I yelled "John!  Don't be like this John.  The doctors at the free clinic said the rash would go away in a couple of months."

My brother in-law didn't say a word to me until the four of us got to his car in the covered parking garage where he popped open the trunk, got out two beers and said, "have a beer....I need one after that!"