Steel Crap Balloonists

the scene of the breakdown

My last day in Chicago was…hard. It's strange coming to a city that you've never been to before. 2 weeks later and it feels like a little home with favorite streets and sights and sidewalk graffiti. 

I finished my classes (Improv 2 and Writing 2) and realized that I was going to have to say goodbye to a lot of people that I would really miss. In two weeks time, we had made a comedy family. I'm a sentimental fool, but I held in my tears, at least for a wee bit and said my goodbyes.

I had three hours between the end of class and my flight to New York, so I figured I'd walk back to my hotel and pick up my luggage. As I walked, I said goodbye to some of my favorite Chicago sights. Goodbye cute sidewalk cafe (the one with the huge pancakes) that I never got to go to. Goodbye way too hip barbershop that I secretly longed to get a hair cut in. Goodbye Panera, my adopted local Panera, my home town hero. Goodbye. Goodbye. Then from the midst of my nostalgia I realized that I had a message on my phone, an automated message from American Airlines telling me that my flight was cancelled due to weather and that I had been rebooked for a flight headed to Newark at 5 am the next morning. At first I thought it was a scam, a Nigerian scam, because everything is a Nigerian scam. Then I thought maybe, maybe this is for real. Maybe I'm stuck in Chicago and I've already said goodbye to my Panera and now I'll have to do it all over again. SON OF A MOTHERLESS GOAT! I began to cry. Then I began to swear. Then I began to start pulling it together and then I thought screw it and then I started crying and swearing again. I had an emotional downpour on the streets of Chicago and people were looking. It reminded me of that scene in Steel Magnolias. You know the one: Sally Fields breaks down in the cemetery over the grave of her dead daughter. "I just want to know WHY?! WHY?!" I might have over-reacted. I definitely over-reacted. 

Flash forward a half-hour and one phone call to my sister, I called the airline and changed my 5am flight to Newark to a 10 am flight to LaGuardia. I actually went into my Panera's to buy a post-breakdown dinner and a huge-ass cookie. I went to my hotel (where I had already checked out) and checked back in. I lucked out and got a free upgrade to a junior suite, sweet. I got in my pj's. I watched Netflix. I had a bedtop picnic with my Panera and realized if the worst thing that happens to me is that a flight gets cancelled and that I have to say goodbye to nice people, well then life is pretty swell.

So, thank you Chicago. You are one hell of a town. Thank you to John and Sarah and Meg(transported Californias and wonderful hosts). Thank you to my teachers and my fellow class/soul mates. But most of all, thank you to American Airlines (even though I did call you steel crap balloonists) for helping me put things in perspective and giving me one more night in Chicago.