A Remedy For High Anxiety At The Columbus Airport

​                      Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:   
     "Equal And Opposite Reactions"      http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
     "Hail Mary"                                           https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
     "Tropical Depression"                        https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

​A Remedy For High Anxiety At The Columbus Airport

         Last Sunday, December 7, I was at the Columbus airport at 7:00 am to catch a 9:00 am flight to Chicago for a visit with my daughter, Claire and son-in-law, Miguel.

      The terminal was decked out for the holidays, 

...and wasn't crowded,

...and had a kind of nice Sunday morning feel.
       Even the Starbucks wasn't crowded for a change, and so I decided to stop there for a croissant and an ice tea. 

      I sat  at a table next to a young blind woman who was traveling with her service dog. We chatted about traveling and about her dog and I told her about how back when I used to teach piano in peoples' homes one of my student families adopted a dog who had for some reason flunked out of guide dog school. When the family first acquired the dog he was so calm, the calmest, most well-behaved dog I'd ever met. But after a few months of life with kids he was as excitable and over-enthusiastic as every other doggie on the block.
       The young woman laughed and said that when her dog was out of harness he went back into full doggie mode, too.
        After my pleasant Starbucks encounter I strolled around the airport for a bit, enjoying a feeling of gemütlichkeit and looking forward to a good, that is to say uneventful, flight. Then I headed over to my gate to wait.

     And wait. And wait with everyone else until our flight's departure time came and went and we received an announcement that the new departure time would be 10:30 am. There was a line of folks who needed to reconfigure their Chicago connections,

...but most of the travelers seemed cool enough, under the circumstances,

...and  the airline even offered us a cheerful little spin on the situation.

        In any case, I myself was cool enough over the hour and a half delay. I just texted my daughter that instead of meeting up for brunch when I landed we'd meet up for  lunch.       
        As our new departure time approached another announcement arrived that now our departure time was 11:30 am. But I was still okay with the two and a half hour delay. Everyone seemed pretty much okay. Until the next announcement that our flight would be departing from a different gate.
       The problem wasn't so much that our flight had a new departure gate as that the screen at the gate we were sent to  posted information for a flight to Chicago with a different flight number and departure time than ours.
       Now people were confused and I wondered if everyone else was starting to feel as anxious as I was starting to feel. Time went by and people were checking their phones, I expect for updated information, but I also expect their information was no more updated than mine was.

     A group was loosely congregated around the podium but there was no gate agent there to give out any information even as our supposed departure time of 11:30 am approached.

      I was worried that I'd gone to the wrong gate. A couple of people I talked to were worried they'd gone to the wrong gate. (Of course, if we'd been thinking calmly we would have concluded that if we were all at the same gate then it must be the right gate). But anxiety was in the air. And it was high. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just me who felt like grasshoppers were mixing it up in the middle of my chest. 
       Suddenly I was jonesing for a Diet Coke with ice. But I was afraid to leave the gate in case some announcement would be made about my flight. However there was a Wolfgang Puck a few gates away,

...and so I zipped over to the restaurant's counter and asked if I might be able to have a Diet Coke to go. The kind server got me my Diet Coke and when I asked her how much I owed she smiled sympathetically and said, "It's okay, Sweetie, it's on me." I thought, Geez, I must look like one hot mess.

​        Then finally help arrived at our gate.
​        It came in the form of a Newfoundland the size of a small pony,

...whose job was to flop down on the floor and let us pet him,

...which I did,

...and he was so soft and fluffy and docile that I just stayed there petting him for the longest time. And it did make me feel better,

...though in truth I don't know whether it was petting the Newfi that calmed my anxiety or my thought that, while we hadn't yet received any updates about our flight, somebody among the airline powers that be knew about us because they sent the dog over to keep us calm.
      Of course, eventually we received a quite apologetic announcement that weather conditions in Chicago had kept our potential take-off time in a state of flux. We were given a new departure time of 12:20 pm. Which later changed to 1:22 pm. Then to       2 pm, with the caveat that we might be put on a different plane, or passengers from a different plane might be put on our not-full flight. But now all was fine, as far as I was concerned, because at least now I knew  we were in the system.
         Eventually a departure time was posted for our flight and the flight that had been posted was moved to a new gate.

      My flight would subsequently be changed to 2:30 pm, then 3 pm. then 3:30 pm, but I did finally make it to Chicago, where I took a train from the airport to the city,

...and met up with my daughter, only 6 1/2 hours late.