Last Friday, the Canadian monopoly known as Air Canada hit a major snafu; every single one of the computers of their global network went down. Ouch. For about 6 hours. Double ouch. And I happened to be flying on Friday. On what airline, you ask? Mais bien sur, Air Computer Crash itself. Triple ouch.

I read this horrible book two years ago called The Long Emergency by James Howard Kuntzler. It’s not actually that the book is horrible–it’s that it predicts horrible things, mainly concerning the end of the fossil fuel platform on which we live, travel, eat, and do just about every other thing in our lives that doesn’t involve a horse, a mule or a human slave. We’re all so glad the days of slavery are over, and that is due, not only to the uplift of the human conscience and character, but to the fact that we have oil and natural gas to do all those jobs for us. Anyway, Mister Kuntzler–in a book–effectively changed how I look at the future forever. And as someone who not only stockpiled rice, water, canned beans, coins and blankets for Y2K, but was also on a freaking local committee preparing the neighborhood for it, I have been known to (putting it mildly) prepare for the worst. So I shouldn’t be reading books like The Long Emergency. Let’s just say that dystopic visions of the future can wreck my day with gusto.

Well, in order to share the misery a bit, let’s just say that we’re in for some struggles ahead–and apparently, those struggles pit us against one another as we wrestle for increasingly decreasing resources. And the worst in us comes out. So basically, when I think of anything beyond, say, 2057 or so, I see us all as rabid, gun-toting militiamen scouring the parched planet for little vegetables patches that the savvy and prescient will have learned how to grow in preparation for the end times. Great stuff. I would really want to date me and make a future together!

Luckily, there is a healthier side of me always searching for evidence to the contrary. And I found it, on Friday, waiting for Air Incompetence to get its act together. Whereas we were all justified, after having stood in line for, oh, FOUR HOURS, to smear our collective feces all over the walls like caged monkeys, my line-mates and I chatted, commiserated, held each other’s places when Nature called, bought one another coffee, went for updates and just generally bonded. After hour five, when we should have been getting all American (I am a dual citizen and definitely felt tempted) to YELL OUR HEADS OFF about the customer always being right and the downright lousy service we were getting, we, instead, pulled each other’s suitcases forward in line so that babies could be attended to. It was lovely. At hour six, when we finally got to the ticket counter and the woman there, who had just started her shift asked “and WHY exactly did you miss your flight this morning?” we grimaced and shook our weak fists in unison, understanding our mutual frustration completely. Later, past security and customs, stuck in the belly of the airport, waiting for a 9 p.m. flight, we took naps, had beers and dinner, and shared about our lives to the point where numbers were exchanged and who knows… some of those people may be reading about themselves right now.

All this to say… you are a BUMMER, Howard Kuntzler, and you are making me a lousy date! I don’t believe that people–under pressure–do anything but get closer and needier and more generous and just generally lovelier. That’s what I choose to believe today. So there.

By the way, this is why I bothered to stay at the airport: FRIENDS IN FLORIDA

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 4:32 pm and is filed under My Life, Photo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.