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A Day in the Life of...

Falling Apart Like a Celebrity Marriage

September 2008
by Deborah Lipsky

I was scheduled to speak in Florida this month and I was as excited as I have never been there before. I was taking an extra day after my seminar tour was over to spend time diving or snorkeling off the coast. I had a connecting flight in Philly to Orlando and I was quite surprised to read the monitor board for departures that there were 4 flights to Orlando 15 minutes apart. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why so many flights so close together until I reached my gate. OMG!!!  I had died and gone to hell as I found myself in "munchkin-ville". Tons of screaming, some stressed balling their eyes out, running around, excited kids crammed into a small area waiting for the "Disney Plane" to take them to their home planet. For an autistic adult who has no children it was a sensory nightmare especially on the plane which felt like one giant trampoline with wings as these excited "little people" bounced up and down in their seats.

I made it to Orlando and had time to kill so I decided to shop in the airport mall to find an exotic bathing suit to honor the occasion of my first visit to FL...  I went to the Sea World store and saw neat bathing trunks with killer whales all over them. I know they are men's but they didn't have any suits for women so I bought a pair.  I asked the clerk if they were swim trunks but I wasn’t able to understand Spanish but she nodded so I assumed that meant "yes".  My first night in Orlando I went to the outdoor pool and was amazed to find that they even heat the concrete patio as it was nice and toasty warm at 10pm. I had my sports bra as a backup bathing suit top so I wore that with my new swim trunks. I felt like I was the cat's meow with my swim ensemble. The trunks felt really nice as they were a very light material and lacked the lining usually seen in swim wear. Then one guy at the edge of the pool commented and said "nice boxer shorts".  All of a sudden it hit me like a concrete brick .........my trunks were too light to be swim material..........I was prancing around in underwear in public!!....oh the horror!   Good thing I will never see those dozen people again.

Things didn't go badly till my flight home.  I got to Philly and found my gate.   Nine flights along with mine were cancelled at the same time. They had one rep to handle all 400 of us and I was number 401. My stimming became quite noticeable.  All the other passengers backed off from me waiting to see if my head would spin around and me shoot out pea soup from my mouth [a reference for those of you who saw the movie "The exorcist"].  It was only sheer luck that I was so far back in line I was at gate 38 when over the loud speaker they announced they were boarding for Portland Maine at gate 38.  It was a feeding frenzy at this gate as other passengers had the same idea of getting on this flight.  Barely able to hold on mentally, a kind woman came up to me and said if there was anything she could do to help [she read my "I have autism “sign around my neck]. To make me feel better she confessed that she is returning from a month long rehab for addictions and is in a sense a "special needs person" too. Then this guy next to us said he too is returning from a rehab center so Claire said we 3 are all special needs going to Bangor. I then felt safe with them and dubbed us the "3 special needs musketeers" and we stuck together. I told them I was renting a car in Portland to drive to Bangor and they were welcome if they chipped in.  Claire marveled at how trusting I was of strangers saying "you don't even know if we are axe murders". I told her I wasn't worried at all as all axes and chainsaws weren't allowed thru airport checkpoint screenings, and only allowed in checked luggage which was already on another flight to Bangor anyway,  and if she tried and succeeded to kill me with a plastic nail file [allowed on planes now] I would be very impressed. They said they wanted to go with me as I seemed to know what I was doing. The irony....2 people battling addictions fresh out of rehab being led by a stressed out autistic person.

We got on the plane along with 7 others bubbling with excitement.  For the next 3 hours on the runway we were  told that we would be taking off shortly, followed by announcements that  all runways were  shut down so many times all 3 of us began to spiral mentally. When we finally did take off the pilot announced we had burned up so much fuel waiting on the runway we may not have enough to make it to Portland.  Although that is a factual statement it is one I didn't care to hear after this whole ordeal fraught with unpredictability. Claire stated that she didn't care if she died in a plane crash on the way to rehab but said "I don't want to die in a plane crash now after going thru all I did at rehab". I didn't want to die either as for most of this ordeal on the plane I had been on the phone to Cathy and I thought that would be just a waste of her time to spend the afternoon trying to help me only to have me die in a fiery ball of twisted and mangled wreckage.

We did make it to Portland albeit disheveled and spent mentally. We looked like heck.  Claire was concerned about how her hair looked and needed a minute to comb her hair. . Then she said, "Why bother.....it is just like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic anyway". That made me laugh. All that was left for a rental car was new KIA. I don't want to offend those KIA owners out there but suffice it to say KIA isn't known for its outstanding German engineering qualities. I drove and it was like riding in a buckboard wagon but at that point in our travels a buckboard wagon felt like a Mercedes as we were in striking distance of Bangor now.  Claire tried to recline in the front seat but this KIA didn't have seats that reclined. I remembered my mom saying that her boss had a KIA whose door flew off going 65 mph on the highway. At this point we all agreed that if that happened to us we would just strap the door to the roof and keep on trucking.

We stopped at the Burger King on the Turnpike for some food as it had been all day since any of us had eaten. I pulled into BK and announced happily, "Folks, we made it this far and Bangor is within our sights. Our terrible ordeal is now officially over".  At that moment the door unlocking mechanism jammed and we couldn’t get out of the car.  After all we went thru to be trapped and held prisoner inside a KIA only 90 miles from Bangor was well.... just plain wrong.  The 3 of us pig piled on top of the door buttons frantically pressing everything multiple times till finally  the unlocking mechanism engaged and our hostage situation was over.   We got our food to go and I got behind a Jeep Cherokee with a dangling rear mud flap. All 3 of us were thinking "if that mud flap lets go and hits this car we all would be decapitated by a piece of rubber" so I was given their blessing to push the speed limit boundaries and pass [for KIA that limit is 71mph] which I did.

In the end we made it and had a "group hug" and we exchanged addresses. I promised them a copy of this article and the adventure of the 3 special needs musketeers came to an end.  Dorothy said it best......"There is no place like home".

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