We used to have a pretty close relationship, snow and I. Snow used to hook me up with days off school, and in return I’d defend snow to my mom, who feared everything about snow and tended to greet the inflammatory Storm Watch Of The Epoch Oh My Holy God Frozen Moisture Will Kill Us All Everybody Move To Florida Women And Children First coverage on the local news in the manner of an imminent invasion. I found that reaction a bit extreme; I mean, we lived in New Jersey, so there’s really no need to go around using military lingo and getting everyone all worked up. Let’s just go outside with a bottle of Camp’s Vermont maple syrup and pour candy shapes on the top of the snow like they did in Little House On The Prairie — let’s have fun with it! Then I got old enough to shovel the driveway, at which time the fun leaked audibly out of snow, because the driveway at my parents’ house is not a short little room-for-two-parked-cars jobbie. It’s long and loopy and hilly, and even if I skipped clearing the whole drive and settled for cutting out tire tracks, I still had to haul a bunch of surveying equipment out back and set up in the rhododendrons to get the geometry right, and you don’t get powdery snow in Jersey, really. It’s usually that soggy, heavy, cafeteria-potatoes stuff, and it’s great for packing snowballs but it’s hell on the lower back, so as I entered adolescence, snow and I grew apart a little bit.

Now I live in Manhattan, where snow doesn’t fall so much as it stops by. It blows into town for a flying visit, and it pretties things up for a few hours, and then it heads off to sleep on Boston’s couch for a week. But snow here brings with it an atmosphere much like the one Ma promoted, a batten-down-the-hatches mood of adventure, no matter how heavily it falls or how long it lasts. It’s one of those things, like jury duty, that serves as bonding for New Yorkers. Snow muffles the sound and the glare, slows everything down, makes everything seem secret and significant.

I didn’t want it to snow last Thursday — the Couch Baron and I had tickets to Las Vegas, and Newark Airport isn’t anyone’s idea of a sweet hang — but at the same time, I could feel my system switching over to Automatic Grand Adventure Mode. Faced with an irritating or unfortunate situation, I like to give it epic overtones in my mind, because it’s one thing for the weather to give you a pain in the ass, but if that pain becomes the stuff of legend, it’s a lot easier to take during the actual throbbing. So, I got up on Thursday morning, I turned off the alarm, I said “hi” to the cat, I immediately regretted saying “hi” to the cat because the cat had seen the suitcase on the floor and heard the just-a-bit-too-casual “hi, Hobe,” the cat did the math and got “suitcase + casual greeting = Hobey goes to the kennel” and zzzzzipped under the bed so fast that time doubled back on itself and the cat collided with the same cat from ten minutes in the future, and I spent the next forty-five minutes pointedly ignoring both cat and bed until the opportunity arose for me to lunge desperately at his disappearing tail, but outside, the snow sifted down, and it seemed like a quest instead of an annoyance. At last, the cat surrendered, but like Sir Gawain, I had only endured the first of many deaths. I had to catch the other cat. The other cat is not smart, and the other cat is not thin, so therefore the other cat should not present much in the way of challenge, but for reasons which defy understanding, trying to insert the other cat into a carrier is like trying to introduce a live minnow into a drinking straw without benefit of thumbs. A plump, dense, hairy, angry minnow. With sharp teeth.

But every epic tale needs a nemesis, and the minnow is mine.

9:30 AM. Out into the snow. The snow of last Thursday had come for a longer visit, sticking to the sidewalk in a most disturbing and slippery manner and swirling threateningly, and I carefully followed the trail of salt and prayed that I wouldn’t hit an icy patch and slide down the incline and into an intersection and get run over by a truck and die, and that I wouldn’t get a flake in my eye and bumble blindly into a mailbox and accidentally spring the catch on the carrier, allowing the cats to escape and freeze and die, and that I wouldn’t get knocked off balance by Little Joe sproinging around in the carrier and bonk into a little old lady and flatten her and break her hip and get sued and go to debtor’s prison and die. Nobody died. I got to the kennel and put down the cats and raised my arms in victory and made that “and the crowd goes wild HHHHAAAAA” sound.

10 AM. The Couch Baron arrived, followed shortly thereafter by our car to the airport, which we practically somersaulted into, high on coffee and the potential fantastical snowy escapades. “Vegas!” we said. “Woo!”

10:27 AM, Lincoln Tunnel.
“I don’t…do you feel any, um, heat in here?”
“No. But — who cares! Vegas!”
“Vegas! Woo!”
“Woo!”

10:46 AM, Jersey Turnpike.
“V-v-v-vegas, b-b-baby!”
“W-w-w-w-ooooo-o-o!”
“M-m-m-mitten?”
“Th-th-thanks.”

Yeah. Twenty-five degrees. Snowing. No heat in the car. A test of grand-adventurer strength, we decided, and here’s the airport, so the grand adventure must start riiiiight now! Woo! Grand adventure! Grand…x-raying of baggage? Well…okay. Okay, sure! Grand x-raying! No problem! Vegas! And…grand checkpoint search! Woo! Yeah!

11:15 AM. And now, should you undertake your own epic journey in the snow, a word of advice. When the fat man’s wand beeps happily every time it draws nigh to your mysterious flower, just look blank and unsuspicious. Do not giggle. Do not imagine a teeny sign posted on your hip that reads, “Sarah’s Vagina: Shrapnel-Free Since 1973.” Do not compose a theme song for your hit TV series, Bionic Cooch, and do not sing the wocka wocka wocka part to yourself. And whatever you do, do not make eye contact with the Couch Baron, or the fat man will lock you both in the tower and pull up the drawbridge.

11:40 AM
“Jesus. That guy didn’t even buy me dinner.”
“For real. I need coffee.”
“Coffee. Woo.”
“Woo.”

11:45 AM. At the gate, we found the flight delayed half an hour, but our spirits remained unbroken. CB went in search of something brunchy. I read a magazine.

12:05 PM. Scheduled take-off time. Flight delayed to 1:15. I put my magazine down for a moment and wondered aloud how late we would have to leave Newark for the trip to qualify as a saga. Two hours late? Three hours? A man across from us had left Richmond at six in the morning, and he seemed to want the saga all to himself, but I didn’t care what flight he got bumped from — the day had plenty of saga to go around.

1 PM. Flight delayed to 1:45. Flight delayed again moments later to 2:15. The PA system droned sweet sweet lies about the brevity of the de-icing line. “Sixty to ninety minutes,” it crooned. “Newark Airport thanks you for your patience. One of us. One of uuuuuuus.” Richmond Guy snoozed angrily. We discovered that it is the custom in certain quarters not to answer a ringing cell phone, or to install voicemail for that purpose, but rather to let the cell phone ring and ring and ring. And ring. And ring. It is also the custom in certain quarters to test every ring tone on the cell phone in times of boredom.

1:30 PM. Flight delayed to 2:30. “La Cucaracha”: assessed and rejected. “Flight of the Bumblebee”: assessed and rejected. “The Macarena”: assessed and rejected. “Nutcracker Suite”: assessed and rejected. “New York, New York”: assessed and rejected.

1:38 PM. “Hava Negilah”: assessed, chuckled at, played for husband, chuckled at by husband, played again with little dance in seat, chuckled at, played again with little dance in seat by husband, compared favorably with “Mexican Hat Dance,” and ultimately accepted.

2:15 PM. Flight delayed to 3 PM. Announcements boomed down from the PA system about a flight to Hawaii. I declared the day an official saga and suggested renting a car and driving to Vegas. We could get there in time to enjoy a good ten minutes of the trip before turning around to come home, and hadn’t CB always wanted to learn to drive? In the snow?

2:45 PM. “Hava Negilah”: rejected. “Beethoven’s Fifth”: assessed and accepted. My father called from the de-icing line to report that his plane, bound for Myrtle Beach, had already run out of booze. He went for a joking tone when he used the words “angry mob,” but it didn’t quite work.

2:48 PM. “Wait, so Paulie Walnuts is on your plane? In coach? … Oh, he just looks like Paulie Walnuts, then. … Okay, I have to go now, Dad.”

3:10 PM. Boarding for 3:30 departure. “Departure.” Ha. Ha ha. Ha.

3:20 PM. A shopping bag repaired with packing tape is not “carry-on luggage.” It is not luggage. It is not carryable. It is a shopping bag, it is repaired with packing tape, it is taking you six weeks to cram it into the overhead compartment because your crap keeps spilling out of it, because it does not have zippers or snaps or fasteners to keep it closed, because it is A SHOPPING BAG for the love of beer and skittles, and if you don’t figure out how to stow it and get out of my way, it is going to get snatched from you, lit on fire, and stuffed down the toilet. Hi. Yeah, behind you. It’s called “a duffel bag.” BUY ONE.

3:30 PM. “Hey, seat! Wow, have you lost weight?”

3:45 PM. We pushed back from the jetway. The flight attendant attempted a bit of gallows humor, which met with a stony silence. She then used the words “very soon” in all seriousness, which prompted a gale of laughter tinged with murderous hysteria. The plane crept along as the flight attendant explained that the plane had to get in the line for the line for the de-icing line. Yeah, that sounds right.

4 PM. Because a weather delay is not the airline’s fault, the airline did not have to give us free drinks or free headphones. The airline could have, if it wanted to engender goodwill. The airline elected to engender grumbling and threats against the bathroom smoke detector instead, and did not give us free drinks or free headphones. The airline offered us instead the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enjoy the comedy stylings of Mr. Deeds without sound while drinking watery four-dollar beers. The airline also compelled the flight attendant to sound enthused about the dinner service. The in-flight meal? A meatloaf sandwich. Oh. Oh, ha ha. Ha. Ha ha. Ha.

4:02 PM.
“‘A meatloaf sandwich.’ You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“And a bag of potato chips! Don’t forget the chips.”
“It’s definitely a saga now. It’s an epic saga.”

4:45 PM. CB finished the latest Harry Potter, flipped the book over, and started reading it again at the beginning.

5:05 PM.
“Poke my butt.”
“Wh– no.”
“Come on, it’s asleep. Poke it.”
“No!”
“POKE MY BUTT!”
“NO!”
“POKE!”
“NO!”
“POKEY POKEY!”
“OH NO NO!”
“Pih!”
“Nih!”
“Ih!”
“Nih!”

5:25 PM. The flight attendant told us that we would get de-iced next. CB moved that we use “de-icing” as a euphemism for something, a motion I seconded, but we couldn’t decide what it would mean. I think we almost settled on an NC-17 definition — “so after we left the bar, I took him home and de-iced his wings” — but it sounded like something Dan from Night Court would say, so we had to abandon the whole idea.

6 PM. De-icing. I didn’t see what good spraying the wings with green Jell-O would do, and said so to CB. CB, who had just finished the crossword puzzle in his copy of the airline mag and started on the identical puzzle in my copy, observed that he didn’t care whether it did any good, since only a fiery death could break the monotony.

6:20 PM. Take-off.

6:21 PM. Fiery death.

6:22 PM. Just kidding.

6:23 PM. Unfortunately, because the guy seated in front of me reclined his seat all the way back into my lap and left it there until we landed. I swathed his face in a hot towel and proceeded to pluck his nose hairs while discussing the weather. Then I gave him a clean, close shave and dusted him off with powder.

6:24 PM. Just kidding.

7:15 PM. With four hours to go, CB ran out of things to read. He took a run at Bust, got bogged down in a paean to knitting, and gave up. As The Meatloaf Sandwich Of Irony filled the cabin with its unholy stench, I offered him my palm, and he read that. Then he got a cup of tea and read the leaves. Then he watched Blue Crush with the sound off while I Cliffs Notesed the plot for him.

7:25 PM. I ate my dwarf apple and my vegan cookie. CB ate his meatloaf sandwich and his chips. We reset our watches. All of that took only five minutes.

7:30 PM.
“Can you poke –”
“No.”

8 PM.
“Stop playing ‘rock.'”
“You stop playing ‘scissors,’ then!”

8:15 PM. Gossip review. Nope, nothing new since 10 AM.

8:16 PM. Nearly delirious with boredom, we made up fake news stories starring ourselves in which we chased each other up and down the aisle of the plane with fire axes, got arrested for starting a food fight, and jumped out of the plane using the first-class passengers’ underpants as a parachute. Then we made up a series of fairy tales starring a tall princess and an even taller baron who had known each other for a very long time. The princess and the baron went on long, boring journeys in search of magical butts that never fell asleep, beautiful fairy queens named Nicotina, The Capacious Castle Of Legge Roome, and delicious fizzy potions that did not cost four dollars. For nourishment, they brought only a single vegan cookie. The princess and the baron killed a lot of people in these stories, including a duke from Richmond, an elf who carried all her possessions around in a taped-up shopping bag, an alchemist who made loaves out of meat, Adam Sandler, Jeremy Northam’s hairstylist, and themselves. Frequently, the princess begged the baron to stab her in the heart with a pen; just as frequently, the baron instructed the princess to beat him to death with a shoe.

8:53 PM. The fairy tales got shorter and shorter. “Once upon a time, I no longer cared whether I lived or died. The end.” “East of the sun and west of the moon, I killed myself.”

9:24 PM. I napped.

9:31 PM. I woke up.

9:45 PM. I went to the bathroom.

9:54 PM. I came back from the bathroom.

9:55 PM. I killed the Couch Baron and then myself.

9:56 PM. Just kidding.

9:57 PM. Unfortunately. We had nothing to read. We had nothing to eat. We had exhausted every possible way of mocking Jennifer Ehle’s hair extensions. We couldn’t smoke. CB refused to poke my buttocks to prevent gangrene. The noxious farts of Row 19 had gone from disgusting to hilarious and back to disgusting before seeping into the fiber of our clothing.

10:03 PM.
“Hey, do you think it’s possible to kill something by actively hating it?”
“It’s worth a try.”

10:04 PM.
“Woo!”
“Woo!”

10:05 PM.
“It’s not working.”
“No, it isn’t.”

10:15 PM. The last hour of the flight began. I turned thirty. I turned grey. I turned Republican. Continents rammed into each other. Planets formed and cooled. A piece of coal became a diamond. The sun flared out and died. Civilizations of insects rose and fell.

11:21 PM. Once upon a time, a princess and a baron disembarked from an airplane. The princess started to get down on her hands and knees to kiss the ground, but the baron planted a Doc Marten in her ass so she’d keep moving, and the two of them found a grotty little smoking room in a falling-down corner of the airport and smoked a cigarette, and the sun shone and bluebirds chirped and a rainbow arched across the kingdom of Nevada. And thus endeth the saga.

Midnight.
“Vegas!”
“Woo!”

December 12, 2002

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