I'll Be Home for Christmas . . . Maybe

Posted by Braden

When I bought my plane ticket for Christmas break, the semester was just starting. I saw that my religion final was scheduled for the Friday of finals week, and it being my first round of finals, I figured I didn't want to try any funny business, like trying to take the final earlier. So I got my ticket for Saturday morning.

A couple of weeks later I found out that we were taking our Book of Mormon final the week before that; our instructor didn't want to make any of us have to stay all the way through Friday to take our exams. Oops. In the end, I figured having the whole week to take finals would still be nice, so I left my ticket as it was.

Finals time came around, and I couldn't find anybody (or any bus routes) going to the airport early enough on Saturday morning in time for me to catch my flight, so I decided to ride up with my roommate on Friday night and spend the night in the airport.

Around 3 p.m. that day, an hour before we were going to leave for the airport, it started snowing hard--the fluffy, nasty stuff that makes roads terrible. My roommate's mother insisted on getting a taxi for us instead of letting her son drive and on not letting us pay at all for it, so we took the two-hour drive up to the airport in the taxi (everyone on the highway was traveling 35 mph).

My uncle, who lived nearby, heard about my flight plans from my mother and swung by and picked me up so I could spend the night at his house. Hearing that I hadn't had a large burrito in a long time, he even swung by Chipotle and bought me one (it was SO good). To make myself less of an inconvenience that night, I babysat my aunt and uncle's kids while they went Christmas shopping, then helped my uncle assemble a big wooden playhouse in his basement.

The next morning he drove me to the airport in time to catch my flight, which was overbooked. They were offering free roundtrip vouchers for anyone willing to give up their seat. Flights home at Christmas are approximately $500, so I was tempted. What's a few hours compared to a few hundred dollars? Those would be some of the best-paying hours of my life! Unfortunately, the soonest they'd be able to get me home was the next day, a little over 24 hours later than I'd originally planned. I was obviously already anxious to be home, but when I confirmed that they would pay for a hotel for the night and a meal, I took them up on their offer and volunteered to be bumped.

One day for $500? That can pay for one of my college sibling's flights home next year, so it's worth it. I spent the rest of the day in my hotel room--taking a nap; reading a book; watching a movie; eating my $15 meal, paid for by the voucher; watching the Las Vegas Bowl. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't family. I survived.

The next day, there were obviously delays in the airports from all of the weather-related bumpings, but I showed up at the Dayton airport around 8 p.m. with four little boys waiting just across the security line to run up and hug me as soon as I was in reach.

And now I'm home, and it's wonderful.