Brian's Blog, Supplemental (if you don't get that one, you're not a Trekkie)

You have GOT to read this article, if you ever thought about sending your kid cross country, as an unaccompanied minor.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/y_clevelan/y_clevelan_ts2493


When I was 9, my parents sent me to spend part of the summer with my Aunt Nancy's family outside Springfield, Illinois. They put me on a plane in Denver and I flew to St. Louis. I had to change planes somewhere. I was supposed to be met at the gate by an airline employee and was not. So I just went with the crowd and wandered around the airport. I had some money in my pocket for snacks, a five dollar bill. I could not find a machine that took bills, because it was 1968 and they had not been invented yet. So I went up to some shoe shine guys and asked for change. I remember they gave me three one dollars bills and some coins in return for my five. They were all laughing and carrying on, and I knew I'd been cheated but what can a nine year old do? So I just teared up and walked on. Eventually, a nice lady in an airline uniform carrying papers accosted me and asked frantically, "Are you Brian Boyd?" "Yes." "Ohhhhh, good, are you ok? Ohhhhh, good. Come with me, we are going to get you a pop and a snack and put you on your plane to see your aunt." "Oh, ok." I never did tell her about the thieves that would steal from a little boy.

So I sit in the holding cell of the airlines for an hour or so with nothing to do but eat all the food they got me, which was a lot, because I asked for it and they naturally wanted to avoid lawsuits and the best way to do that was to give me all the food I wanted. (It still works, by the way.)

When I got on my new plane to St. Louis, a nice female airline employee in a uniform and very friendly and helpful sat next to me on the trip. She talked and talked and that was fine, because I was feeling talkative after all the sugar and caffeine. And those nice stewardesses on the plane gave me all the snacks and pop I could drink on the plane. Then she put me directly into the hands of the airline people on the ground and my Aunt Nancy and her family met me at the gate.



Had a great summer, remind me to tell you of a couple of stories about that one, and then when I went home, I flew, unaccompanied, back to Denver. This time, I think I remember it being a non-stop flight...

So I land in Denver and it was a smallish plane so it did not roll up to the gate but stopped out on the tarmac and the stairs rolled up to the door. I get off with all the people but, again, I'm unaccompanied, and there is nobody to tell me where to go. So, like some doofus, and my dad never failed to chuckle and shake his head when he told this story and he told it until the day he died (I can imagine his coffin shaking back and forth as he remembered the story at his funeral. But I could have been imagining it.), I get off the plane, walk down the stairs, swaggering in my new found confidence as a lone world traveler, superboy, educated fraud victim, streetwise abandoned street urchin and full of sugar and caffeine again, and start walking off toward the runways.



Some nice airline employee in a uniform caught me and steered me toward the gate where all the OTHER passengers were going and I just kept my feet moving and my brain shaking on caffeine and sugar and walked into Stapleton Airport. My dad and mom were waiting there and my mom was so HAPPY and RELIEVED to see me alive, and my dad was just shaking his head and chuckling and said, "Where were you going? That's where the planes take off! Connie, did you see what your son did?".

When we got home, my mom had made my very favorite pie as a homecoming gift: lemon meringue. I was so full of sugar and caffeine that it didn't even look good. I ate a couple bites and quit. I think she felt bad. Sorry, Mom. I've made up for it since.

I'm sure, when I meet up with my parents again on the other side of the veil after this earthly existence, my mom will have the spirit equivalent of lemon meringue pie waiting for me and my dad will be standing there, chuckling and shaking his head, and say to me, "I was worried you were going to head out the wrong direction, so thought I'd better accompany you. HAHAHAHAHA!"

Har dee har har, Dad. Laugh it up. You owe me a buck sixty three for the shoe shine boy thing.