Point of View: What a Weird Trip

Talking to my sister-in-law Linda the other day the subject turned to trip-planning.

“I leave that to John,” she said.

“It’s just the opposite with us,” I said. “I leave it [and many other things] to Mary. As you know, I can’t hear very well, and I’m not very good with computers. My finger might slip and we’d find ourselves booked on a flight to Afghanistan.”

That had her in stitches, which is good because she’s recovering from a painful ankle injury, and so I continued. “Last night, I was looking over the itinerary for Georgie and Mary’s flight to Raleigh-Durham this weekend, and I found that they were going to stop first in. . . .”

“In Baltimore?”

“No, not Baltimore, in Orlando! Go figure. It was the first Mary’d heard of it. She was not pleased. ‘They told us we wouldn’t be changing planes,’ she said, retrieving the printouts from me. ‘I knew something was strange when it said the flight would take five hours and five minutes. Raleigh-Durham’s not that far away as the crow flies.’ ”

“Then I looked at the rental car details. And I saw that they were to pick up the car at Islip at 1 p.m. Friday and return it there at 7:30 p.m. Sunday! That didn’t sound right at all, and I told her so. She was incredulous, and, once she’d seen that it actually said what I said it said, nonplussed. ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! After flying down to Orlando and back, there would have been no car for us in Raleigh-Durham! They would have put us on a bus. What is wrong with these people!’ ”

“ ‘You can’t trust anybody,’ I said. ‘Nobody.’ ”

“After she’d gotten the car rental details straightened out, she thanked me profusely (which of course raised my self-esteem) and, reasoning that obviously she was now among those legions not to be trusted, said she would entrust me with the planning of our next trip. Brimming with diffidence, I said I would rise to the occasion . . . once the puppy we’re to get soon were raised.”

I ought to be able to find a travel agent by then. I trust the species is not utterly extinct. I think I heard someone say one had been spotted the other day at the Morton Wildlife Refuge. And there’s a rumor that there’s a mating pair at Mashomack.