Well, going home, I too got a prophetic sign of sorts. Instead of a shoe on the wall, I got Denise Dooley. While waiting during our Arizona lay over, Zach decided to get us some lunch as I scouted out seats in the terminal. The place was packed but I seem to have found the last two seats next to one another (no thanks to the two jocks who sat across from me who decided that four seats would suit them just fine). Minding my own as I like to do (yeah right), a man came my way with the intention of taking the seat next to me. "Is this seat taken?" he asked. And being the awkward passive human being that I am, I decided Zach could take the seat across from us reserved by one of my jock friends' hockey gear. Plus, Zach was going to be a bit longer with the food and we'd be boarding in no time, I convinced myself. Now is an appropriate time tell you about this man. He was no ordinary man. He was John Candy by looks and actions, just not by name. He also had this little tuft of hair sticking out of his right nostril (I was luckily also placed on his right side) in a way that you would expect John Candy too. As an added bonus, my new friend Denise was a "hand placer" for lack of better term. Is there any better combo than a chatty cathy - hand placing stranger? I dare say not. As I sat listening to his wild tales of meeting Walt Disney and playing in a band with a man who went on to invent the electric drums as well as be the drummer for the Beach boys.... oh, and also nailing a semi permanent gig of doing sound for the red hot chili peppers... I looked at him steadily, trying to remember every detail as I knew I would be repeating it to my sisters shortly. However, this seems to be something that good ol' Dooley didn't recognize, as he continually checked in on me by placing his hand on my knee when he got to an important detail. (I kept thinking- Where the heck is Zach. And also, what more can I do? Is my very intentional eye contact not enough? I don't know how else I can say- Yo Denise, I am DEFINITELY listening to you). And right in the middle of those thoughts, Zach came to my rescue with food. Well, Denise picked up on this most quickly and said to Zach "was she lying? She told me no one was sitting here?" As I was trying to excuse my way out of it, the couple on the other side of Denise, oh so kindly placed their bags on the floor to open up an extra seat and scooted down so Zach and I could be together. Denise however, did not get the idea quite right and forgot to scoot down so the empty seat would be by me. Instead, he patted his hand on the empty chair to his left and said "oh goody, now you can sit here and I'll have TWO people to talk to." Not soon enough, we boarded the flight only to find out that our hydraulics were broken and it would be a two hour wait. Zach and I were the last people off the plane and you can bet that by the time we got back in the terminal, it was JAMMED pack. But like you probably expected, my eyes found my new friend and he waved us over... back to the two open seats he had saved us: one on his right and one of his left. While trying to blame this incident on him, he spoke up with confessions and took full responsibility. "Of course I was behind this all. I have SO much to tell you guys. Now, I figure I probably only have about one hour of material, but I factoring in some time for Q&A." And then, after about 2 and a half minutes of material (mostly about Arizona airport socks), he was off to buy some (which I was trying to convince him to use as sock puppets to kill our time in the terminal) . "Sometimes talking to the same people for a certain amount of time gets boring, so, I'd better run. I have some things to do." Those were his last words and he was gone.... but only for less than a minute when he came back with said socks and offered by buy us lunch.
It was very peculiar... and very much in the ways of my normal life. But also a good indicator of the goobers I'd be spending Christmas with: my family I love oh so much!
