Sun on my heels

I hit Edmonton International Airport at supper time on a Saturday evening. My bag was slow coming; as usual. I got a return ticket for the shuttle downtown. It is a lot cheaper than a cab as the EIA is nearly in Calgary it is so far out of town. I loved the old Muni the municipal airport. It used to be that flights from the north always landed there. It was right downtown. This was; oddly enough where my hotel was. I could see the old airport, now called City Center Airport from my hotel. They are going to close the old place, unless irate petitioners can stop them. I came here four years ago on a medi-vac flight. How long will it take ambulances to get here from the International?
I took the shuttle as I was not in a hurry. My timing was good; one was boarding as I bought my ticket. That would shorten things a lot. I put my bag in the rack and took a seat. It was filling up fast. The baggage rack was packed and the poor driver had to keep moving bags to make room. Eventually he got the bags settled and started to collect the tickets. There was a problem. One guy could not locate his ticket. He turned to the driver “You saw me buy it! You know I paid.” The driver picked up a radio mike and spoke into it. “You saw me!” The guy continued. “Man I am already having a bad day! I had a hassle with the airline too!” His face was flushing and he was pacing the aisle. The driver was polite, but firm. “We need your ticket sir, where did you pit it?” The guy went through his pockets and wallet. Nothing. He started his chant again. “You saw me pay!” People were looking at their shoes trying desperately not to make eye contact. I looked out the window. The lady who had sold me my ticket arrived. “There, she sold me the ticket, tell him!” The guy was practically begging. “Sir the driver needs the ticket to get paid if you can’t find it you will have to pay for another.” She too was polite but unflinching. The guy was losing it. He started t swear then looked around at the children present and apologized. “You know I paid! What if I was a little old lady? Would you still charge me double?” The lady was not budging. “Look in your bags sir if you can’t locate your ticket you will have to pay for the ticket when you reach your destination.” The guy was not a little old lady. He was a big guy. But he didn’t seem violent just agitated. “This sucks! I am having a terrible day!” He started to rifle through his bags. Within minutes he found the ticket and handed it to the driver.
Then he turned and scanned the bus. There were only two open spots left. One was beside me. Now I remember when I was single I used to kill time while flying by looking around the departure lounge. I would wonder who had the seat beside me. I would find the prettiest girl in the room and secretly wish that she had the lucky ticket. Lucky for me that is! Sadly in all my years of traveling it never happened. On the flip side of this I would pick the person I least wanted to sit beside me. “Not the big guy who is already snoring.” I would think to myself; not him! Inevitably I would be sitting comfortably. The flight attendants would be closing the overhead bins. I would glance at the empty seat beside me and think “Well I didn’t get the cute blonde but I didn’t get snoring guy either. Then it would happen. Snoring guy would come hustling down the ramp and stand in the aisle beside me “I think that’s my seat!” I never won these things. Right now I was repeating a silent mantra “Psycho-guy don’t sit here! Psycho-guy don’t sit here!” Too late. He flops down beside me. Our eyes meet. I was truly doomed. We had made eye contact. I had opened the door of communication. He had complete license to give me his life story. He wasted no time.”I am not normally like this you know! I am normally a nice guy! They pushed me to it! These big companies; they always stick to the rules. What about the customer? Where is the customer in all this. Do they ever think of the customer?”
He looked around desperately but he could not catch another eye. People stared at their shoes, busied themselves with their children; pretended to read, fussed with cell phones. “I am a nervous flyer.” He said staring full at me, the only one trapped in his minute but intense sphere of influence. “I had a long day, a four and a half hour flight.” I did not mention that I had been on three planes and would be travelling more than twice that time. “A long day, it could happen to anyone. We’ve all been there!” I blurted. I too scanned the crowd for a sign of support. No one would meet my gaze ether. OH MY GOD! I was becoming guilty by association! I could see the scene clearly in my mind. The shuttle bus pulled over on the Whitemud highway, an Edmonton Police paddy wagon parked behind it, lights flashing, rear doors open. The entire passenger population pointing at me as they lead psycho-guy off in irons. “They’re in this together!” I snapped back to reality “Huh?” I heard myself say. “Well what would you do?” psycho-guy repeated less than an inch from my face. “Ummm; er, ahhhh…” I heard myself stammer. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do! I’m going to write a letter. I’m going to write to the president of the airline and the shuttle company. They may be able to push old ladies around but they can’t push me.” I wanted to remind him that the old lady was a figment of his imagination. I imagined that by the time he finished writing the letter he would have named her and given her a complete back-story.
“I am doing this for all the little people!” He was reaching full stride now. In his mind he was leading a populist uprising against the oppression of the bureaucratic oligarchy. He raised his fist in some sort of Black power salute. No one moved. They continued feigned indifference. He pumped his fist. “I am striking a blow for the little guy.” I looked at him again. He was six foot four and three hundred pounds. “Little guy?” I almost said it. Quickly I looked at the floor of the bus. The driver called out the name of a hotel from the front of the bus. Psycho-guy stopped in mid rant. “Oh, that’s me.” He said to me meekly, almost apologetically. “Here’s good, you don’t need to go up to the front doors. He got off pulling his bags behind him.
I cursed myself as a coward. I should have spoken to him. I should have challenged him. Instead I was just glad he was gone. I should have told him my trick for turning around a bad day. I think back to when I was a child. When I was a child I hated stormy rainy days. I always imagined that bad things happened on such days. I guess it comes from the scary movies I would sneak down stairs to watch when my parents were out. They always take place on stormy nights. I imagined all terrible things happened on such days. When I was about thirteen and was working on the farm of my Mother’s cousin I was loading a trailer with 100 pound bags of limestone from a room in an old barn. There were stacks of it; over eight feet high and row after row. I moved one bag and everything started to move. I was alone in the room and being thirteen and bullet-proof I threw my puny 160 pound frame against the tons on shifting limestone. I thought I would be like Big John in the song and hold back the deluge like a mighty oak. I didn’t. Bag after bag crashed into me onto me and around me. My hard hat was torn from my head, my watch from my wrist. I fell forward and the bags fell on top of me layer after layer. They barked off skin from my face and arms. They tore off my right sneaker and sock. They pinned my arms and crushed my chest. I couldn’t even raise my chest to breathe. In fact I couldn’t move a muscle. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to be afraid but I would have. The bags broke open and fine limestone dust settled cool on my sweaty face. It ran over me like water. Just like water it filled my nose and throat. My mouth was trapped, squeezed open by the weight on my head and I felt the dust settling in my throat and lungs. I remember having only one thought. I was going to die! No doubt about it. So young and so far from my family. My one thought was what is this going to do to my Mother? Nothing else just a flash in perhaps a second all this flashed in my mind. I was dead and what about Mom? I was only a kid but I understood just what it means to die. So many others had died in just such a way as this. So this was death. And then nothing. I blacked out I guess. In my little cocoon world I could see nothing, my eyes were full of lime. I could hear nothing for the same reason. The world faded quickly to black.
While all this was happening to me, my world had shrunk. All my attention had been focused on an event so horrific that it threatened my very being. But fortunately for me other things were at work. When the limestone had hit the ground it had shook the ground so much that dishes rattled in the two adjacent farm houses. My Mother’s cousin was doing laundry when she heard the dishes rattle. They must be blasting she thought. Her Daughter was closer. She knew right away something was wrong. At the same moment as I had been buried a huge cloud of choking dust had come through the barn door. She felt the thud ad knew instinctively I was in trouble. She got her Father and he, in spite of three crushed disks in his back; began throwing 100 pound bags of limestone like they were pillows.
The first that I knew of all this was when I felt sunlight on my right heel; left bare when my shoe and sock were torn off. I don’t have a clue how long I was unconscious or what caused me to regain consciousness. Was it the movement of the bags on my back performing some sort of artificial respiration? All I know is that the feel of sun on my ankle told me that I was going to live. It took further minutes to free me. When I was free those gathered and there were a number of people there helped me to my feet. Mom’s cousin; her husband and son were there. So too were her daughter and daughter-in-law. I was filthy and bloody with one shoe off, no watch (which was still ticking when found, a Timex of course). They asked me if I was alright and I remember saying “Yes.” Then I remember taking one step and crumpling like a rag doll against the barn wall. They carried me inside and put me on a daybed in the sun-porch. I threw up big clumps of limestone and it ran from my nose for days.
The thing that puzzled me is that it was beautiful that day. That is how I felt the sun on my ankle. A bad thing, the worst thing that had happened to me to that time, and I guess it has o be tied for the worst thing until now, because I am not dead yet, had happened to me on a nice day! A nice day like today. Today when psycho-guy had a bad day. I should have told him that story. I should have told him that sometimes; when I am having a bad day, and it is nice like it was today; I take off my shoes and socks and walk in the grass or on the sand. I let the sun fall on my heel, because it hardly ever does. And when the sun hits my heel I am transported back to when a foolish child thought he was bullet-proof. Who thought that bad things only happen on bad days. I like to do this because it reminds me that no matter how bad my day is, it could be worse. And no matter how bad what I am going through is; it could be much worse. It centers me. It reminds me that I am alive! Now it is not a cure-all. You couldn’t do it at forty below or even when it rains. But maybe that guy wasn’t a psycho at all. Maybe he was just having a bad day on a beautiful day. A perfect day to take off your shoes and socks and let the sun shine on your heels and remember that you are alive.