When You’re the Son of an Airline Employee
Due to an ill-advised joke, I had found myself in the little immigration room in Miami…
Bureaucrats aren’t known for their sense of humor, much less their grasp of sarcasm.
My mother had raised me better than this, but I was very tired. As a life lesson, I now had a passport with two holes punched into it and no adequate way to prove who I was to get home. Like a total amateur, I had forgotten to bring my driver’s license with me as a back-up. It seemed I was going to be in this little room for the foreseeable future.
Next to me, another bureaucrat was yelling at a quiet, exhausted Haitian man.
“DO. YOU. SPEAK. ENGLISH!”
We both stared blankly at the immigration officer, who threw up his hands, stomped his feet, and left us alone together.
“So, what did you do to end up stuck in here with me?” my new friend asked. We both burst out laughing.
Let’s back up about 8 hours.
There had been a monsoon in India, so it had been about 48 hours since I’d last slept.
