Hey. Made it to DC. 3 hours later than expected. I’ll update later. Night.
The Next Day
“Yatta! Helloooooooo DeeeeeeeeeCeeeeeeeee!” Getting here was quite the adventure.
After having boarded the first plane, we were informed that something was wrong with their system, and take off would be delayed for another half hour, being that everyone had to be checked in by hand. In SJU, sadly, this is pretty common. However, it would seem that Spirit, the airline we used, was actually to blame, as we found out later. I’ll just say this now: Spirit isn’t exactly the way to go. No food (just beverages), and the flight took longer than thier expected time. Anyhow, we were scheduled for a connecting flight from Florida to DC, but being able to catch it would be too much to ask for. They quickly get us another flight with AirTran… a flight that goes to Atlanta, Georgia, and then to DC. Anybody who knows me on a personal level will tell you that this is the type of thing I’d easily laugh off, and I most certainly did… for a while.
The whole mess forced us to do the whole “take off your shoes, pass through metal dectector” process again, but before getting to that, we had to get our boarding passes checked. And this is where it all goes to hell. A large black woman attended us, asking us for identification in something that was apparently supposed to be Spanish. We ignored the insult (because really, that’s the only word for it) and answered in English, showing her our identifications. She looked at me and asked if that was the only identification I had. I nervously answered with a “yes,” to which she said “OK, that’s fine. I’m just gonna send you guys over this way,” pointing to a casually dressed man who seemed to be waiting for something. Mom, Natalie (my sister), Jonathan (my brother), and I all stood in line behind me. The man looked over his shoulder at us, and calmly said, in a Russian accent, “I know what this is… they’ve done this hundreds of times to me. They’re going to screen us.” Oh hell no. The smile on my face completely disappeared, and there was murder in my eyes. One of the employees came and led us to a small, isolated area with a few seats, confirming what the Russian had told us. I sat their taking deep breaths, attempting to supress the anger that was building up, and trying to forget just how embarrassed I was. Mom had apparently felt the discrimination as well, having called over another employee and telling him something that I hadn’t heard quite well. Whatever it was, the employee response was “well, these things are completely random…” As he said this, I looked over to the side and watched as a group of three people of Spanish origin headed our way. A more random procedure would have been pulling a paper from hat full of 99 unfolded papers with “yes” written on them and one folded “no” paper with your eyes open. This screening was nowhere close to random. The anger now became rage, and my eyes had suddenly become watery. Having a black person be passed through without screening while I was being screened gave new meaning to adding insult to injury. And, on top of all of this, we had less than 2 minutes to catch our flight once we were finally done with the entire ordeal. FORT LAUDERDALE/HOLLYWOOD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, REMEMBER THE NAME. We hustled over to the plane, and were glad to see that God had had mercy on us and held the plane in place with His own two hands.
I was still trembling with rage, and felt the need to break something. As I talked about the issue with Mom, I, with some mild violence, opened and closed the drop down table a few times before the man in front of me (who happened to be one of the Spanish people who was also screened) looked back at me rather menacingly. I immediately calmed down and apologized, and he went back to a normal seating postion. Before I continue, there is something you need to know about Mom; she was born and raised in the Bronx for almost 15 years. Her childhood was somewhat violent, having always had to look over her shoulder wherever she went in a town where so much as a mean look could earn you a black eye and the taste of blood. She and her sisters got into more fights than I (or she) can remember, both in and out of school. I love hearing stories of her corrupted childhood; it’s all incredibly fascinating, it really is. But there are times where her experiences take a toll on the decisions she makes, though not to the extent of what her former self would do. This plane ride was one of those times. She looked at me with this look in her eyes that terrified me and asked “Did he just give you a mean look?” I quickly knew where this was going and answered “No no, it’s ok, it was my fault, I shouldn’t have been messing with the table.” She looked back back at him with the same look, then looked at me and requested that I change seats with her. I refused. She asked a couple of more times before I was left with no choice but to switch, begging her not to make an issue out of this as we changed seats. She wasted no time in releasing the table and slamming it down. The anger that I once had quickly became fear as thoughts of what could come of this rushed through my head, and I began pleading with her to stop her madness. She continued her rampage for a while, saying different things along, and I continued to ask her to calm down. Finally, I was able to reach her conscience, but she wasn’t about to leave without having the last word. “You want me to stop? Fine,” she said, slamming the table back up, locking it into place, and moving to another seat. Amazingly, the man never once reacted to her shenanigans, and I thank God even now for that. I was too upset and too embarrassed to say anything to Mom. The accumulation of stress had finally taken it’s toll on me, and I quickly fell asleep. Once I woke up, I looked in terror as Mom was once again sitting behind the man. She quickly assured me that everything was fine, telling me that she was able to speak with the man on friendly terms. I didn’t dare ask for the details, so I can only hope that she apologized to him. Anyhow, two Air Tran flights later (which, by the way, is an airline I would definitely reccommend. Free headsets and pretzels are always a good thing), we were finally in DC.
The hotel room is somewhat small for 5 people, but the internet connection more than makes up for it. We were able to take a stroll through King Street the next day (today), but that will be a story to tell once I get the pictures up.