Just a drop-in

Hello and sorry for my absence . . . I was off sailing around the lovely islands serving absolutely no purpose. Not so different from my regular life (where I also have little purpose), just different scenery. I did treat myself to the Internet cafe on board the ship. Now, I can spend money with the best of them, but sticking my credit card in the machine to pay a small fortune for some web time is not my idea of fun spending. But one morning I decided it was worth it, so I took my coffee and went down to watch the sunrise and send an email to my daughter.

There's a husband and wife there, obviously upset. He's got red eyes, she's sniffing, but I try to mind my own business and write my email. I'm a really lousy typist. Never learned. But, I have pointlessly long fingernails, so I suppose I do make a bit of noise. A few expensive minutes go by and the man comes over to me and says . . .

"Excuse me, but we don't know how to work the Internet, can you help?"

I look into his sad, teary eyes, and say, "Sure, what do you need?"

"Well," he sniffs, "we've had a death in the family, so we need to find a flight from St. Bart's back to Wisconsin. How do we do that?"

So, with my credit card securely slipped into the slot, I start searching all the travel sites while his wife man's the communal printer. I go to the airline sites, everything I can think of, all the while, he's weepy and she's sniffing. Finally, after $65.00 in charges, the cheapest thing I can find is around $800.00. The information spits from the printer.

The wife says, "Honey, we can't afford that much for plane tickets."

So I say, "Ma'am, once you get home, you can send a copy of the obituary and/or the death certificate to the airline and I'm sure they'll give you some sort of bereavement fare."

He says, "Really?"

"Yes," I tell him. "They are really quite accommodating."

His eyes brighten. "Even when it's your cat that died?"

So, I'm pretty much out $65.00 and last I heard, they were putting Fluffy in the neighbor's deep freeze until the ship returned to the US.

Welcome to summer!

Kelsey

www.KelseyRoberts.net

FILM AT ELEVEN, July, 2005