Wednesday, 24 December 2003 | Opportunity

The man at the counter said there was no way I was getting on that plane, but then he changed his mind and said, "Merry Christmas" (like it was an excuse) and handed my checked luggage to another man who was to personally deliver it to the plane. It was 7:05 and my plane was due to leave at 7:30. I'd been stressed in the taxi—it was rush hour and the day before Christmas Eve, and the BQE was full of cars with red-glowing tails and I was terribly late—but I was tired enough and feeling sick enough that I fell asleep in the taxi three times anyway.

I had accepted my fate, even before the man at the counter told me I wasn't getting on that plane, and I was okay with it. I'd nodded and already started to wheel my ugly green luggage to the back of the line before he called me back to tell me I could get on the plane. The plane ended up being delayed over an hour anyway, although neither of us knew it yet.

So why, when I was offered an impossibly amazing deal from the airline to give up my seat, did I not take it? One: because I was tired and sick and rather delirious, the kind of delirious that comes with having taken serious sedatives (I hadn't), or like when the hairdresser is combing your hair and you want to fall asleep and don't really care what she does with the scissors. Two: because I foolishly half-thought that people in NC would be upset with me for not arriving as planned. (It turns out they would've totally understood.) Three: because no one else was taking the offer, which made me subconsciously discredit it. Four: because taking the offer meant I would have to stand up and recover my bag from the plane's belly (I was already sitting on the plane) and walk through the cold and figure out where the hotel was and how the hell I was going to get there. Five: because the alternate flight to Raleigh would've been two legs, instead of one. Six: because I am a big idiot.

The deal, had I given up my flight? All of the following: two round-trip tickets to anywhere in the U.S./Canada, good for one year. Two free upgrades to first class. $400 toward a plane ticket anywhere in the world, good for one year. Free accommodations at a nice hotel that night, and a nice dinner at that hotel. A first-class ticket to Raleigh first thing the next morning.

Exactly one minute after the offer expired, I began banging my sick aching head on the plastic oval window to my left. I didn't sleep at all during the flight, like I'd planned. Instead, I used that time to consider all of the places I could've gone for free but chose not to. I thought about meeting Bill Murray at the hotel bar. I thought about sitting in a quiet hotel room with cable TV and getting rid of my sore throat with some sleep and a warm bath. I wondered why my usual spontaneity was completely absent when I really needed it.

Just after take-off, I watched as we climbed over Brooklyn, which was made up of tiny bright orange lights, as if someone had pegged its shape on a Lite-Brite. It looked just like it does on maps, but didn't look real at all, and it seemed odd that I was able to see a big, recognizable land mass in its entirety. I could make out the flashing lights on JFK's runway (I was coming from LaGuardia), and I had the irrational thought that it would be easy to land a plane, because, look! the runway's right there, so obvious.

The Atlantic matched the black sky and looked like nothing, just darkness. At that moment, I could see the flashing lights of twelve other planes—I counted—flickering like lightning bugs all around.