POP QUIZ: Guess who’s got a two hour flight delay in the new LGA? ME ME ME!!!

Wouldn’t be a work trip without a little travel hiccup.

The new terminal is really nice, but it also cost $7B – as in BILLION – dollars. That’s 10,000 feet tall, or10 Eiffel Towers, of $100 bills stacked on top of each other. It’s got a really nice Shake Shack and cool vintage airport postcards (breaking arm patting oneself on back for that find), but let’s hope the employees got a caviar pizza party when the new terminal opened. At least they did not change the Welcome To New York apple taxi to the gates sign. Always sit on the left side of the plane going into LaGuardia.

Really wish I could ship my kids out here to join me for this perfect fall weekend. There’s this cool newish area called the HighLine that Sydney would love, we could spend a few days debating which is the “real” Ray’s pizza, and catch some epic theater and maybe a baseball game. My kids LOVE New York – granted, we stayed in a suite on Central Park and ate at Tavern and Sardi’s between other baller weekend tourist fun.

I’ve always liked coming here. At my first corporate job, I’d visit our offices overlooking Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty. In college I’d road trip or use my airline passes to raid Jones Beach with Long Island sorority sisters. In law school a crew of us (high school pals) did NYE in Brooklyn where my friend Nate lived in a semi-abominable craphole that seemed awesome at the time. We abandoned Times Square after about 1/2 a beer and five minutes mid afternoon of the countdown when everyone realized the bathroom situation was gonna get dire quickly.

In high school that same crew drove impromptu for five hours from Pittsburgh to the Big Apple one weekend when parents were out of town. We parked my friend Mark’s rusted floorboards Nissan hatchback that needed zipties to keep the back down at LaGuardia before catching a cab and going sightseeing in Manhattan, listening to music in Harlem (5 white kids gone from western Pa too ignorant and arrogant to appreciate just how out of our element we were) before driving home 15 hours later.

Growing up, we would fly to New York on the evening of New Year’s Day. The city was in exhale mode, flights were always wide open into the city and we still had a few days of winter break to burn before the next semester started. We would take one of the last flights in and cab to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square where airline folks got a phenomenal rate. Our room was dirt floor cheap with a top price view. My mom would relax in the room (with a bottle of house wine) , the airplane juice had worn off for Kelly and me, and my dad would take us for a walk. There was a street vendor with a trench coat full of “Rolexes” that my dad had a rapport and would joke with as he had a number of overnights there each month.

The city looked like a place full of stars with glistening lights in the cold night air hoving atop lampposts twenty feet off the ground. The tree at Rockefeller Center was still lit and one calm cold New Year’s Day night – it had to have been after midnight – we noticed that the ice rink was frozen and completely empty. We had to dress up then to ride the plane using our employee passes – dresses, no pants, and we took it seriously because we were not gonna risk a fun trip on account of a clothing mishap. Kelly and I were about 8 and 10 at the time. My dad gave us the green light as Kelly and I leaned over the plywood barrier separating us from the rink. I slung myself over the boards and onto the risk, he gave Kelly a boost and we were off – running full tilt across the ice in our black patent Mary Jane’s, sliding on our knees like shadowed little girl elves. Sheer glee. I can still feel the cold through the knees of my tights.

With all the security cameras, we would probably never get away with that now. Especially not as adults, regardless of how many cocktails of confidence we had fueling our efforts.

Years later, when I was just shy of thirteen, I got to go back with my dad when he had an overnight. This was a big deal because good grades in our household were rewarded with a trip where my dad would bid for a cool city with a long overnight layover. We would ride in the back of the plane as he flew as part of the crew to that night’s destination and we would sightsee. Kelly got to go all the time because she’s a freaking genius and studied really hard and so always got good grades. I – her undiagnosed ADD older sibling that was much less studious, fell more into the working B category student. Getting a good grade trip was a royal treat since it didn’t happen nearly as often for me as it did for Kelly. I was elated: we were going to stay in Manhattan, have dinner at Sardi’s and then see Bernadette Peters – who I LOVED – in Song&Dance.

The morning of our flight, I put on my most grown up dress: white linen with cap sleeves and a huge almost sheer fuchsia linen flower that adorned the entire front torso to shoulder section. And for about the 4th time in my life, I was having my period. I was super:

1. set on weating THAT very white dress; and,
2. embarrassed about my body. So instead of asking my mom for a refresher course on how tampons worked (I’d never used them) I doubled down layered up with a big ol’ maxi pad and one of the super size tampons I found in the hallway closet. It had a Pepto Bismol pink plastic applicator that looked like a shellacked bullet crossbred with a Mary Kay Cadillac colored Q-tip. I didn’t know that the pink part was just a mechanism to get the cotton to Point B: that you didn’t leave the whole thing “in there”. So I corralled every ounce of my twelve year old hutzpah I had and jammed it up there. I figured I’d take it out before bed – which was a good nine to ten hours later.

We have a fun flight, take the crew shuttle to the hotel and head to dinner. Guess who is sitting at a table about 20 feet from us? Bernadette Peters! She was sitting with Martin Short. I am trying not to gawk as I order my pasta and kiddie cocktail. And I start sweating like a whore in church.

I excuse myself, head to the bathroom upstairs and splash water on my face. I check to make sure everything is still where I put it “down there”, step outta the stall and feel another heat wave burst across my forehead; pearls of sweat are literally dripping from my hairline. I breathe slowly, gather my composure, and low and behold, in walks Bernadette.

She stands by me at the powder room mirrors. I look to my right where she is standing. She smiles (because she is amazing and one of the still greatest and most stunning and charitably hearted talents ever to grace Broadway), and I am about to tell her that I cannot wait to see her performance when my eyes roll in the back of my head and I pass out. Right there. In front of Bernadette. INSIDE Sardi’s women’s room.

Next thing I know, my dad and a kind waiter are helping me up and we bolt into a cab to the ER. It takes the MD about four seconds to figure out that I’d experienced toxic shock from Satan’s little (or in my case, my mom’s jumbo sized) hoo-ha cotton swabs with plastic encasing still on.

I was MORTIFIED.

My dad – the oldest of five boys that grew up on a farm – was totally ill prepared. And this is YEARS before cell phones.

We missed the show and went back to the hotel where I packed up my now super wrinkled dress. I put on khakis and a t-shirt and he took me to his trench coat watch guy and let me pick out any “Rolex” I wanted. Which proceeded to break a few months later, but at least that night ended on an oddly high note.

He told me he was pretty sure everything was gonna be okay and, as usual, he was right. He’s been gone for over thirty years now and I still sometimes feel like a slightly broken compass without him, but experiences like that trip seem to somehow eclipse the test of time.

Funny thing is about six years later I got to see Bernadette and Martin Short on Broadway together in Goodbye Girl with my Mom and Kelly. Proof yet again that Karma’s got a sense of humor.

I’ll be the crazy old hag in the nursing home rattling on about passing out in Sardi’s as a kid. You can be my roomie and tell the staff I’m not nearly as nutty as I seem. By that point, we will be bribing our kids to sneak us in packet flasks of booze. One of the six of them has gotta take empathy on us, right?

Gotta go join the human cattle herd aka Southwest airlines boarding line up. Pete is incommunicado while hiking the Grand Canyon for five days. Had ai know he would be gone on my travel date, I might have gone United so I could get a for sure window seat. I’m not an SWA traitor, but the roshambo of business travel can alter alliances. I still maintain that Southwest is a great thank you Herb Kelleher overall airline, love love love the people, but this boarding protocol is for the birds.

Hang in there – xoxox love ya, Stormy