On my desk at home are the strewn makings of a summer vacation — scraps of paper and Post-It Notes. Legal pads and torn slips marked with lots of stars indicating I’ve hit gold. Pay dirt. A bullseye. The traveler’s Holy Grail. Maybe it’s the perfect flight with the perfect departure time, or a not-so-long duration, or a price that won’t make me question whether I really need my second kidney.
I love these starred scraps of paper. They sing to me when it’s vacation planning time. They sit on the top of the stack and as I walk by, I marvel at them and say things like, “Did it again, Boss. You rock!”
Until … BOOM! Scandal rocks my perfect slip of paper: A dog has perished on an airplane flight. My family is enraged. They have blacklisted the airline. The very same airline on my precious scrap of paper.
My plans go down with the dog.
“NO!!!” I’m told. “No, no, no, no, NO. We are not flying that airline. They kill dogs!”
“I see,” I tell my socially-conscious wife. “I understand the situation, and all the emotion surrounding it. I appreciate your care for the world, and your love of animals, I do. But don’t you see that I built an entire trip around this one perfect flight? They have free onboard WIFI!”
“Nice, dad!” I hear a 12-year-old yell from the other room. (How did she even hear this conversation all the way across the house?) “You are going to equate the life of an animal to a ‘perfect’ flight and free WIFI?!?”
“But you LOVE free WIFI,” I yell back across the house. I am met with the sound of an angry, “harrumph.”
Oh boy. I’m sunk.
I try again a few days later.
“So, remember that perfect flight I mentioned the other day? Well, the price got better. And now they’re offering free tacos!”
“NO!!!” I’m told. “No, no, no, no, NO. We are not flying on that airline. Their CEO was just caught stealing sand off a beach. STEALING SAND!!! We, as a family, cannot support them.”
OK, what?!? Stealing sand? Is that even a thing? There must be a logical explanation … because the flight leaves at a decent hour in the morning and defies the space-time continuum: It literally lands before it even leaves! And beach sand? That’s just silica! I can ship them a few bags from the hardware store.
“Is it really that big a deal?” I ask. Bad move.
“Nice, dad!” I hear the 12-year-old yell from her friend’s house across town. “So, you don’t mind destroying the environment and encouraging lawlessness … all for a free taco?!? Double-harrumph, dad. DOUBLE-HARRUMPH!!!”
What does she have, like, super hearing? And I really like tacos.
I’m still plotting. I can’t let that little scrap of paper go. Can I? It’s the result of hours of hard work. I’m thinking of getting with the airline’s PR people. Maybe there are some things I can suggest to help make it right. I can’t take any more “harrumphs.” I’m not sure the walls in my socially-conscious house can take it.