Thomas W.P. Slatin

We are headed back to New York today!  I’m a bit apprehensive because my mom sent me an email warning me about an approaching snow storm that might affect our air travel back home.  For this reason, I opted to take my laptop on the airplane with me just in case we are stuck in an airport somewhere for hours on end.  There’s nothing more annoying than having to sit somewhere for a long period of time without the option of being productive.

As always, here’s a breakdown of today’s events…

• 7:30 6:00 (!) AM - Wake up.
  They say early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  Whoever said this apparently forgot to mention that this group is likely to be all old folks.  Why?  Because young people stay up late at night, and sleep into mid morning.  They’re also likely to be flat broke, whereas all the old folks I know are loaded.  Must be nice.
• 7:30 AM - Breakfast.
  I had a waffle with a side of sausage.  My dad had a much larger breakfast, likely due to the fact that he didn’t finish dinner last night.  My dad had a bowl of plain oatmeal (yuck!), a banana, a glass of orange juice, and a bagel with cream cheese, and managed to finish it all in record time!!!
• 8:30 AM - 11:00 AM - Waiting Sucks.
  Sat in the hotel room staring out the window again.    In a way this was good as I had an opportunity to charge up my electronic accessories for a long day of air travel.
  Apparently, during the rush and commotion of my fathers illness, he neglected to pack all of his belongings before heading to the emergency room.  Such is a common mistake with sick people.  I had to re-pack all of his clothing because he was in such a rush to get to the hospital that he just threw all of his clothes in his bag haphazardly, mixing clean and used clothes together.  For some reason, clothes fit better when they’re neatly folded; maybe it’s because folded clothes are happier as such.
  Around 9:00, my fathers friend Jerry stopped by the hotel lobby to drop off a bag of my fathers effects.  In the bag was some medications, a camera (some digital point-and-shoot), and a book on some scientific theory that I did not understand.  His friend went onto introduce me to his new partner, but unfortunately I didn’t catch her name.  He said to her, after my formal introduction that, “..everything Thomas does, he is good at.  He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met in my life.”
  For some reason, I thought that he was being sarcastic, and I started to giggle a little bit.  He wasn’t.  In fact, he was being quite sincere and I felt like an idiot.  He went on to ask me about what my plans were for the future, and had I been able to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  Truth be told, I still don’t know.
  He reminded me of an article he had read in the newspaper from back when I was in my third year of Fire/EMS/Rescue when we were called to a fire on the roof of a pharmaceutical production facility.  Apparently, he still after all these years vividly recalled how I disobeyed orders from the fire chief and climbed a service ladder to the roof  and extinguished the fire using a portable fire extinguisher.  I was congratulated on my quick thinking and actions by the head supervising engineer at the facility, which unfortunately was at an awkward moment in time when the fire chief was upset with me.
  The next day I was handed down a 1-week suspension from service from the chief for disobeying orders, while at the same time, I was named a hero in the press.  Truth be told, as details came to the surface, some years later, the fire chief was willing to risk the lives of employees working at the facility as well as the health and safety of the general public by letting the fire grow larger in size and severity as a means to justify higher budgets for fire protection equipment and training.  For the record, in all of my almost 10 years in the fire service, I never thought of myself as a hero, and to this day, I still don’t.  I just think of myself as a average emergency responder who takes his job seriously.
• 11:00 AM - At the airport!
  Waiting at the airport isn’t fun.  Thankfully they have FREE Wi-Fi at Tampa International Airport.  That’s a far cry from what I’m used to at my local airport (Albany International Airport), where they charge you daily.  Fucking T-Mobile bastards.  How much could it possibly cost to deliver Wi-Fi?  My parents have been providing free public-access Wi-Fi for years at their house in the middle of Stamford, New York.  Because I’m bored sitting here on the floor (needed to be near an electrical outlet to charge my laptop battery), I’m going to attach a map of where you can get free Wi-Fi courtesy of the Slatin Family!

• 11:45 AM - The Flight From Tampa International Airport to Charleston International Airport
  Traveling with your 93-year-old dad who has just gotten released from the hospital sucks.  People are impatient and despite the kindness and professionalism of the flight crew and folks working at the airport, passengers just never seem to want to cut you a break.
  As soon as I got to the airport, I had to deal with security, who for whatever reason, upgraded my fathers status to the highest and subjected him to more than necessary security screenings.  Of course, I was with him, which subjected me to 3 (yes, three) rounds of walking back and forth through the metal detector.  Again, for the record, they failed to find any metal on me whatsoever during the 3 passes.
  They also repeatedly x-rayed my shoes, backpack, laptop, wallet, etc.  What were they expecting to find, exactly after these items were then too run through the x-ray scanner for three passes?  I was kinda hoping that they did come across something valuable in there, like some very expensive item I lost years ago, but no such luck.  I was able to pass through without an anal probe, but just barely.
  Now for something I don’t understand.  Once you pass through the security checkpoint, you are required to surrender all liquids and all containers exceeding 100 ml.  Once you get past security, you can purchase these items (at double the price you would pay before security… bastards).  Not only that, but once on board, you are handed a full soda can.  Once a soda can is empty, is useful for many things not only as storage of materials, both solids and liquids, but it is also an excellent source of sheet metal.  Sheet metal can be used for a variety of different things, and sheet metal is bent and molded into many of the items we use on a daily basis, in fact, about 90% of a modern car is made of sheet metal.  While I’m not going to describe what products can be made out of sheet metal, for the purposes of this article, and without going into to much detail, let me tell you that some of these “products” are banned from being carried aboard an aircraft, shall I say.
  Also, as for the other folks traveling on this paticular flight, everyone was nice to us, with the exception of some bitchy lady whom my father had to swap seats with.  For the duration of the flight, she kept looking at my dad and I with evil, bitchy-like glances.  Did I mention that she was in fact, a bitch?  She told her tale of woe to everybody who passed, but nobody really cared or noticed (except for me, of course; writers need to keep an eye out for the little things).
• 2:40 PM - Charlotte Douglas International Airport
  Hey!  This is a really nice airport with a great layout.  Not to mention FREE Wi-Fi!  Why can’t there be free Wi-Fi wherever you go?  I’m such a technology whore that once it becomes affordable, I’m going to buy myself Verizon Wireless mobile broadband!
  On a side note about the flight, I noticed that laptop batteries don’t last as long as a typical plane flight.  Note to self: consider purchasing a backup battery or portable power supply.  Not that this is really all that necessary considering that all you really have to do is sit near an electrical outlet at the airport and (when nobody is looking) plug in your laptop.
  There are some older folks from Albany, NY (my neck of the woods, more or less).  They’re saying that there is snow on the way.  My mom (who can’t drive very well in snow with her crappy Honda CR-V) suggests we spend the night in a hotel once we land.  No way!  I want to go home to Angie! 
• 4:30 PM - On A Flight To Albany, New York
  Have you ever seen the movie Flightplan starring Jodie Foster?  If I’m not mistaken, in the movie her husband (or somebody she knows) is deceased and being sent back home in a coffin in the baggage compartment of the airplane.  Well, believe it or not, I happened to be sitting next to a window overlooking the baggage loading.  I just happened to look out the window and see a long white box secured with several tie-down straps.  On the top of the box was printed HEAD.  At this point I thought to myself oh shit.  Sure enough, it was human remains; in other words, a dead body.  Yuck!  This is something that I never knew about when it comes to flying in commercial airplanes.  I thought it was just a Hollywood myth that an airline would ship a deceased individual.
  Apparently, it is true, and it’s fucking disgusting.
  On a completely different side note (I’ve still got an hour and twenty minutes till the plane lands), I have seen many a dead body in my 10 or so years in Fire/Rescue/EMS.  When I was working at a hospital that employed me to work in the emergency room as well as on the ambulance, one of the duties of my position at the time was to transport corpses to the morgue.  It was the absolute most disturbing and disgusting experience of my life.  I would return home at night thinking about how gross it was to have to cut the clothes off of dead people, give them a sponge bath, wrap them in a sheet, and then take them to the basement where they would then be put into a freezer that would be locked.
  I know it sounds crazy, but I absolutely flat-out refused to go in there alone.  I don’t know if it’s the innate fear of the unknown, or of my own mortality, or the fact that I once opened the morgue door and walked right in on an autopsy in progress.  Whoever was performing the autopsy at the time had gone on either a cigarette and/or lunch break and had let the person on the table unattended, and unfortunately, no longer in one piece.  During my brief stint as a pre-med student, I’d seen a live autopsy once or twice before, however, the hospital where I worked part-time was sloppy and procedures were rarely followed if there was no supervisor present.  I’d love to spill the beans about all of the really messed-up stuff I saw there, but I can’t afford to get sued over it…
  …Well, on second thought, maybe if I reveal it slowly over a series of future posts it will be okay, but I am not going to ever reveal where or when I worked.  Sorry.
  Let me just say this…  When I worked at this paticular location, it was located within a small city, and we had a steady flow of patients who either expired within the city hospital jurisdiction, while enroute to the hospital in the ambulance, or while they were in the hospital.  The most disturbing deaths for me were the ones that involved young people (mostly under the age of 20), or suicides.  One case was a 19 year old girl who committed suicide.  To make things worse, her family was poor and she wrote a suicide note on a paper towel.  It was short, sweet, to the point, and incredibly sad (how much can you really fit on a paper towel using a marker).  It basically said that she felt as if her life was approaching a dead end and that in death she would be happy.  Kinda creepy, but there were others that I had to read (and later had to attach to my report… another function of my position).  One note I read went on for as many as 12 pages in which the patient spent hours cataloging all the folks whom he had various minor disagreements with during his life.
• 6:00 PM - Albany International Airport
  Yay!  Back in the area where I live!  Everything is great except for one small problem; I have to spend the night just 25 minutes away from where I live because my mom refuses to pick us up.  Thankfully, The Desmond is right around the corner!
• 7:00 PM - Dinner
  Yay!  The Desmond has two restaurants on site!  Oh, and free Wi-Fi throughout the premises!  Did I mention that I like free Wi-Fi? 

• 10:00 PM - Bed Time
  Ah!  Tomorrow I will be home!  Can’t wait to see Angie! 

Posted under Writing