News From An Acorn

A Thanksgiving Table

There was one Thanksgiving I’ll never forget when I was a kid.

We lived in Madison, Maine for a short time, a two year break from growing up in Boston. The funny thing was we went from a tenement in Boston to a three decker tenement, of all places, in rural Madison, population three thousand.

To say that we had no money was an understatement. So there we were on the second floor on a dead end road. Fortunately for us we had become good friends with the folks above and below our apartment. When Thanksgiving rolled around it made sense to combine forces and share a meal together with our neighbors.

My mom had determined that we should all sit together at one table, which, given the fact that we only had a modest sized round kitchen table, seemed impossible to make happen.

But Red, my mom’s boyfriend, who in time would become my stepdad, had a plan. From somewhere he got two large sheets of plywood and fastened them together. We cleared out the living room and juxtaposed the now extra long sheet of plywood out from one wall. A sawhorse on one end provided the “legs” of our makeshift table, while the end against the wall was screwed down fast atop the wall’s trim board that conveniently ran the length of the wall at a perfect table height.

Various dished began arriving from above and below our place and before long we were all sitting, about a dozen strong, to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. The turkey got carved, drinks went around, stuffing got passed and all seemed well.

We kids were situated on the inside close to the wall, I suppose to keep us away from the other end which, because the makeshift table extended so far into room, put those at the outer end rather close to the gas-powered space heater that kept our apartment warm. Of course another reason may have been just to keep us contained!

There was the usual chatter that accompanies holiday meals, when suddenly we heard a loud ear-piercing ripping sound as the entire trim board, to which our table was attached, broke aw from the wall! Before any of us could react our table dropped on one end and landed square on our knees. Anything liquid, milk, adult drinks, gravy and whatnot cascaded downward splashing over plates and onto the floor next to the wall.

Everyone froze in place, though as memory serves me, none of us could move anyway with the weight of a Thanksgiving meal, and the plywood, directly upon us.

Red, who was sitting at the other end, with sawhorse still in place, was up in a flash, grabbed a chair and jammed the back of it in by our knees to hold up the works from falling any further. We, mostly the kids, were soaked but relieved that our meals were more or less intact!

In no time at all gasps of horror turned into laughter. Plates and glasses were righted, the floor got wiped and our Thanksgiving meal continued.

Near the end someone said, “Hey, at least we won’t have to wipe up the table!”

_______________________

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Kevin Lee 

 

Sun Runners

It’s mid August and the signs of summer winding down are everywhere.

Back-to-school specials flood the airwaves and printed media, and parents exhibit that strange mix of sadness to see the season end and moments of delight to know they’ll soon have some time to themselves again…or so they hope, anyway.

Yesterday, a rag-tag band of summer castaways stopped in to visit. Two boys and two girls, ironically, each as tall as the next and all headed into the eighth grade within two weeks.  I asked if they were sad that summer would be ending soon.

August Clocks

“Dude. I’m mad bored. Can’t wait for school to start,” says one with hair to here in skater clothes and shoes.

“I wanna see my friends,” said one of the girls. “But it means I have to go to bed earlier…no more sleeping in ‘til noon for me! Can we get something to drink, Kevin” she asks.

“Sure,” I say, “Help yourself. You know where it is.”

They dropped their skateboards in place and headed for the fridge, revealing the real reason for the visit. Coming back, as if in unison, they draped across the couches, boards on their laps and just sat there, sipping, saying nothing.

These were not the kids you see in back-to-school circulars and ads. They looked hot and grubby and thoroughly happy with themselves. The scrub-up fairies for school had not caught up with them yet. They needed haircuts, even the girls. And one boy looked like he’d been doing his best to grow something on his face since last Christmas. More hair than beard for sure.

Skater merit badges

One boy had a nasty scabby mess from the side of his knee down to his ankle. “How’d that happen?” I asked.

And when he told me, that’s all it took… a tour guide’s explanation from each teen unfolded, explaining every scab and scar and where they came from and what trick they were attempting to master when they wiped out. They were so happy I asked. Secretly, I hoped they’d ask about my boyhood scars too. But of course they didn’t and instead got up to leave.

“Where you off to now?” I asked.

"My mother dropped us all off at Fort Rodman this morning, said one of the boys. We skated along the beach on the bike path, then to Cushman School and now we’re headed to Taco Bell and then to UMass. Tara’s mom is gonna pick us up there when we call."

On the way out the boy with the hairy chin asked me when teen group was starting up again.

“September 12,” I said. “I’ll text or Facebook you and the rest of the group soon.”

“That’s cool... Later.”   

No GPS required

I walked with them out to the parking lot to see them off. Without breaking their stride or even bending they dropped their boards, hoped on and off they went in unison, the same way they came in. Their wheels echoed off the stone wall behind Town Hall on one side and the parked cars on the other, creating  a little roar of four until they rounded the corner and skated out of sight.  Not one looked back or said goodbye…a skater thing, too cool for old dudes and giving up emotion.

The sight and sounds made me smile as I walked back to my office. Returning to my desk I spotted a note on the white board that read, “Kevin, thank you for the drinks. see you soon <3, Tara.”

Kevin Lee

 

 

Twenty-Five Years

After twenty-five years of counseling children and teens in a cozy corner of Town Hall it is time to move down the hall to another space being built for us.

Twenty-five years anywhere, let alone in one location is a heck of a long time. Whenever I start whining about moving my colleagues in this industry laugh at me and say they’ve moved dozens of times in half as many years, from job to job and from one closet-sized office to the next dugout within the same agency. And of course I know they’re right.

I counsel and I teach. And one of the things I teach youth within my care is to pay attention. In twenty-five years, location becomes place, and place becomes life, and life makes memories of joys and tears and everything between. Our present office may be just that, an office with an attached large meeting room for groups, but it has seen people of all ages, some walking in with their week-old babies, or others carrying tragic news of family violence, sometimes death or news that daddy went to jail. The doors of 118 have seen parents and kids aplenty, and spanning twenty-five, have seen State Police, FBI, politicians, good cops, bad cops, the hungry and homeless, newlyweds and immigrants, some lonely, some lost and others to celebrate. They came, all of them, because these doors were open and someone on the other side was there to pay attention.

Tossing, shredding, organizing what to keep and let go of is good inner soul work and there’s nothing like a forced move to make that happen. Town Hall has a mini-fleet of huge, green recycling bins on wheels that are taller than half the young folks in my care. Filling them with youthful help is both pleasant and instructive. I handle everything that goes and think about the circumstances of the persons and events around each thing who’s time has come; a former client’s demo cassette of his garage band in 1988, A once colorful drawing, a gift to me by a second grader that fell in pieces when I took it off the wall, are all handed to eager waiting fingers in a race to fill what they’ve playfully named the “big green monster man.”

It strikes me that almost everything I toss is older than my youthful charges. And as we toss and pack up what to take their wisdom of a dozen-plus years keeps me dealing with the here and now through their chatter:

“You wouldn’t throw away anything I gave you, right, Kevin?”
      “No, of course not, Sarah.”

Kassie, hogging and hovering over her high value assignment, the shredder, says, “When I first came to group I thought you lived here…in this office. Like, when we left and went home, you stayed here until we came back again…”
      “That’s funny, “but trust me, “I go home at night, thank goodness.”

“Wait,” says Aaron, “Twenty-five years in here? That’s twice my lifetime. That’s just weird to think about.”
      “You’re telling me?”

“Mollie, who’s real specialty is watching others work, is plopped on the couch, staring at the ceiling and chimes in, “I think that you should just stay here. I like it here. Why can’t you just tell them you’re not gonna move, Kevin?”
      “Ah, my dear, it just doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?” she insists.

James, who is slow to speak but when he does his peers are listening, cuts in saying, “Don’t be dumb! It’s just another office just like this one…with new paint. And, its got a bathroom in it too! That’s cool.”
      ”True, bathrooms are good.”

Mollie sat up and stared at James like she had just had some kind of a revelation and says, “You mean we don’t have to use the public bathrooms anymore?”
      ”Nope.”
“Okay,”she says, “I’ll move.”
      “Here then,” setting a box on her lap, “Carry this down to our new home, please.”

Kevin Lee

Garden Story

Today the messengers of hope arrived in little feet and rambunctious bodies.
They came six strong through the front door and five, hello hugs behind them, dashed straight out into the backyard like they were catching a train for work. Perhaps they were.

“I want to dig, Grampa,” said Maddie, as she struggled to lift a shovel twice her size.

So dig she did. And soon brother Zach got into the act as well, even as sis tried to claim the entire garden as her own.. Soon Kevin flew by to survey the action. He dropped his plastic baseball bat and bent to scoop up handfuls of fresh, moist April soil which he instinctively molded into dirt bombs. And like any almost six-year-old, he methodically smashed them one by one against the nearby garden trailer

Zachary, meanwhile, declared war on worms and was frantically trying to dig down fast enough to see where they had slithered to. In the hands of a three-year old, The spade he held suddenly looked more like a weapon than a gardening tool. One minute Zach was carefully rounding, patting and talking to the clay pot he had just tenderly filled with soil, and a heartbeat later he was on the attack for whatever crawled or dared to move.

But it was Maddie’s rhythm though that held me most. She sat, present to the moment, to the earth, the soil and what was immediately before her. She used the adult-sized spade as best she could, but preferred to bury her fingers deep, scooping the soil by hand, seemingly rolling her fingers over the loosened earth as if reading something else. Then, with both hands, she scooped her find into her makeshift bucket.

Now and then Maddie paused to scan the whereabouts of her siblings and cousins and at one point glanced upward at the pine trees waving in the wind, saying, “Gram..pa, look! It is… windy!” With that assessment done, she was back to work, scooping, feeling and inviting me to dig in as well.

Soon the call to supper rang out through the yard and in a flash mud traipsed in the door as five pairs of sneakers lost their owners in a earth-caked heap on the way to sharing one more meal together.

Just a day. And we are in it.  The promise of spring nudges along with shoots and buds and little bodies blossoming into a brand new season of growing. It is enough and it feels just right.

Kevin Lee

Special Delivery

I should have known better, knowing him as I did.

“Son,” he said, “This order needs to go to Needham first thing in the morning. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure thing, boss, you got it!,” I told him, feeling grateful, and taller, for the expression of confidence to let me, just eighteen, drive the company van through morning rush-hour traffic. Besides, the trip would eat up the better part of two hours of work time, not to mention that I’d earn the commission for completing the order.

Boss said, “By early, I mean it has to be there no later than 6:30. Got it?”

Damn, I said to myself. that is early! “No problem,” I said to Charlie, my boss. “I’ll leave here by 5:30, that’ll give me plenty of time.”

“That-a boy,”

Charlie was a self-made man, old school, who worked harder and longer hours than any of his employees. He was intense, demanding, but enjoyed a good laugh at anyone’s expense. Whenever special customers or old friends in the business dropped by with birthday announcements or special news to share, Charlie produced a bottle of bourbon and shot glasses seemingly out of nowhere  no matter what time of day it was.. "Have a pop," he'd say, and then it was back to work.

That night, I set two alarms to make sure that I was up and out on time. I arrived at work in the morning to find the biggest damn box, I swear it was four-foot square, sitting on the loading dock for me to grab. I nearly got a hernia lifting it up and into the back of the van. I grabbed the delivery sheet, rolled down the van’s overhead door and jumped into the cab and left. Five-thirty-five. Not bad.

The traffic was horrendous. I’ve never seen so many cars not going anywhere…including me. I started to panic, worried I might not make it on time. I began rehearsing  what I’d say to the boss when he found out that my delivery arrived late. The palms of my hands got so sweaty I was wiping them on my pants as I crawled along on Route 128.

Suddenly things began moving again, and with less than six minutes to deadline, I stepped on it every chance I could.

I rolled into the wholesale distributor at 6:30 exactly, backed the van up close and staggered through the doors with the beastly box and plopped it on the counter.

“Here you are sir,” I said. “On time as promised!”

“Thanks kid.” The manager smiled…then grinned, as two more employees came out from the back and just stood there. I figured that’s how many they’d need to carry this box away.

“Oh,” I almost forgot,” the manager said. “Your boss called and wants you to call him before you leave.”

He spun the phone around on the counter for me to dial. Charlie answered.

“Kevin,” the boss said anxiously, “I need you to open the box, and somewhere in the middle of it there’s an envelope that I need you to open.”

Really?, I thought to myself, thinking maybe he was worried that the order wasn’t right.

The store manager handed me a cutter and I carefully snapped off the heavy duty strapping and popped the box lid open. I fished past the packing material and started removing one by one, what appeared to be perfectly square patio tiles. After about the eighth cement tile I found the envelop. By now the audience had grown to four men looking on.

I unhooked the string-clasp and pulled the large piece of cardstock out of the oversized envelope. It was blank…until I turned it over…

…and there, in large red letters read, “April Fools!”

I was stunned and in such a daze that I barely heard the roar of laughter on all sides. I didn’t know whether to laugh, start swearing or run like hell hoping to never see these guys again.

The manager, pausing from the chorus, said, “Guess he got you good, huh?” He does that every year to someone!

With the envelop in hand I turned to leave when the manager said, “Take the box with you, kid. We don’t sell patio tiles here.”

I should have known better, knowing Charlie as I did.

But then I thought, just wait until next year.

Kevin Lee

Old Dories

You never know what interesting stories lurk in the shadows of a boatyard.

It was race day, early March, and my five rowing teammates, waiting for our start-time, had scattered here and there attempting to block the winter wind that was rolling off the water.

I found my spot between the stern of an old dry-docked and rotting dory and the weathered old boathouse. I had a notion to get off my feet, huddle up and rest before our pull across the bay. I no sooner picked my spot to do just that when I saw another man, ten feet over, who was flipping up his parka against the wind when something orange flew off and landed at my feet.

“Sir! You dropped something,” I said, as I picked it up and handed it to him.

“Thanks, lad,” he said. “I’d be lost without this. It’s my shellfish license. Been raking littlenecks for over sixty years.”

And he continued, the two of us standing there between the evidence of time and age.

“My wife thinks I’m nuts,” he said. “Me, at eighty-four years of age, still going in the water up to here, pulling on a rake.”

“You’ve got twenty-four years on me,” I said. “I doubt I’ll be shell fishing at your age….good lord…”

“Well if your ass is in a chair all day, no way. You gotta be moving,” as he pumped his arms back and forth, like he was raking up a catch.

“Hell, I’ve worked the docks for fifty years in those god-damn freezing ice houses, lump’n boats, get’n all wet year in and out. At least when I get in the water now it’s cuz I want to!”

“Man,” I said, “that work’s tough on the body…the bones... and you look great.”

“Well, truth be known the vodka kept me warm down on the docks when it got cold. I even smoked a pile of pot with the younger boys to make the days go by. I’d smoke a Lucky, then a marijuana cig, like that, all day. Crazy.  But vodka’s better.”

“God’s been good,” he tells me. “I wore out this shoulder,” pointing to his right one. “But the rest of me, I tell yah, works just fine.”

My new found friend leaned in closer, resting his hand upon my shoulder to punctuate the punch line to his story.

“And I still have sex! Honest. Not lying. No Viagra crap either. Wife says something’s wrong with me, a man my age, chasing her like that around the house. I don’t know,” he says, raising up his chin and brows to look me in the eyes.  “I just been lucky, real lucky, I guess.”

“So remember lad. Drink a little, get a little, work hard. It’s good. You’ll see. What time’s your race?”

 

Kevin Lee

Plane Luck, Continued

(Continued from previous post)

It was a beautiful sight to see the passengers on the crashed plane slowly walk up the runway in our direction before disappearing into a room on the other side of the terminal. And within a few minutes more, another unexpected sight appeared….in less than fifteen minutes following the plane’s hard landing and crash off the runway, Chris Ghita, the general manager of the Palm Island Hotel that we stayed at arrived on the scene.

The Calvary Arrives

With cell phone in one hand and a two way radio in the other, Chris, a muscular small-framed man with a commanding presence, seemed to arrive out of nowhere and took control of what he felt was his responsibility—us!

Upon receiving a call that a “plane had crashed,” Chris, along with a physician who lives on Palm Island, sped by boat across the one mile span between the two islands and arrived in Clifton Harbor, an eighth of a mile from the airport. The doc went to check on the passengers getting off of the plane and Chris continued to the terminal.

Within minutes we were ferried back to the dock where one boat was waiting and another would soon arrive to transport us to Canouan, the next nearest island with an airstrip. From there, we hoped to catch our plane and make it in time to Barbados to board our scheduled American Airlines flight for Miami. While waiting for the second boat we were treated to lunch at a dockside restaurant, at the expense of Palm Island Hotel, even though our stay there had officially ended.

“Plan B” Stands for Boats!

As we boarded the boats and got under way, Chris had arranged for our luggage to get loaded and was busy checking on our connections clear through to Barbados. The fact that all this was being done without us having to make one phone call ourselves was truly remarkable and a story in itself…a reminder of the quality of care and service we had enjoyed for the previous ten days!

By early afternoon the ever present Trade Winds were sweeping across the open waters of the southern Caribbean, which translated into six to eight foot swells during our hour-long boat ride to Canouan. In spite of the considerable spray and pounding about we remained grateful to be making progress on our journey home.

From High Seas to Stick Shifts

We arrived at the dock at Canouan and were reunited with our luggage, and within minutes a six passenger Toyota taxi was backing down onto the dock. We somehow managed to cram all eight people and our gear into what looked like a breadbox on wheels and headed for the airport. My contribution to making us all fit was to straddle the center console between the two front seats, which included the gear shift. And yes, it was a manual transmission! Every time the driver had to shift up or down (which was almost constantly!) I had to hoist by butt upward and out of the way so the poor guy could keep his overloaded taxi moving.

It was here, on the way to our second airport, that we learned more about what had happened back at Union Island Airport. The plane that crashed while landing had come from Venezuela and neither the pilot or copilot had ever flown into Union Island before. They actually thought Union Island was Canouan Island, which explained why they ran out of runway during their approach, as Canouan has a much longer airstrip. They also undertook landing at Union coming in with the wind, not against it, which those in the know say is rarely ever done.

Canouan Island

As we pulled up to the entrance of Canouan’s airport terminal we shared our final goodbyes to Chris and his crew from Palm Island. Once we went through security (again!) we walked out to the other side to the waiting sixteen passenger plane that was supposed to pick us up at Union Island. As we prepared for takeoff, both pilots in our plane, having flown over the airstrip at Union Island to see first hand that they could not land with the damaged aircraft protruding onto the runway, commented on how lucky everyone was to have made it out of that plane unscathed.

We’re Not In Kansas Anymore

Once in the air our thoughts quickly turned to the next leg of our trek home as it appeared we would land at Barbados a half-hour before our jet to Miami was scheduled to leave. Upon arrival, however, we quickly learned that customer care has its limits, especially with outfits like American Airlines. Even though Chris had called the airline to say that our party of eight passengers would arrive in time, good old American Air sold our tickets to folks on standby and rebooked us for the next day.

However, once again Chris had been working the angles and had spoken with Blair, the on-site travel consultant who greets incoming guests and represents the Palm Island Hotel. She managed to find decent hotel rooms for all of us in one place, arranged for a taxi, and for the same driver to bring us back to the airport in the morning.

Given the unforeseen events of a very long day and the good efforts of so many, it was hard to complain. Passengers on the crashed plane were okay; many hard working folks had done excellent work to move us along and we would, albeit a day later, arrive back home ourselves, safe and sound. And having witnessed and benefited first hand a level of care and professionalism by Chris Ghita and his staff at Palm Island, we are already looking forward to returning again to beautiful Palm Island in the Grenadines.

Kevin Lee

Plane Luck

Last week while preparing to leave after a ten-day island vacation, we (Betty Ann and another couple we vacationed with) were present when a small plane attempted to land at a very small airport and narrowly avoided disaster.

Just plain luck

The news that supersedes all else is that there was no fire and all passengers, including several children, made it out of the plane okay. That fact alone, stands as the true blessing of the day. So with that very good news I can  now, gratefully, move on to the drama of human events and the rest of the story.

At tiny airports and airstrips, everyone knows one another, and while they have their modest official “divisions” set up for immigration processing, baggage checking, ticket agent and security screening, there’s lots of cross-talking and island bantering going on among employees and regular passengers. There may be the occasional hum of a prop plane cranking up, but the squawking of shore birds outside and the distant whirl of a powerboat cruising by at the end of the single runway dominate the audio landscape. Add to this the feel of  the wind blowing off of the water and through the tiny terminal and birds jumping above in the rafters, by comparison , offers a very different sensory experience than either L.A.-X or JFK International airports.

With check-in behind us, we settled in for what we thought would be a half-hour wait for our plane to arrive when the muffled sound of an approaching plane could be heard. Suddenly the noise grew unusually loud and just as quickly turned into a deafening roar followed by a loud “bang” and what sounded like tires screeching on pavement. Everyone, including employees, stopped what they were doing and looked up and within seconds workers began screaming and running for the exits.

The Human Response

Now for sure, I’m a firm believer in, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” so when people in uniforms started running, you don’t have to ask me twice! And knowing that the runway was not more than twenty-five feet from the terminal and that most of us couldn’t actually see the airstrip from our side of the building, the frightful question struck me, and I’m sure others too,”is that incoming plane gonna hit the building?” 

We bolted, leaving everything behind, out into the front of the airport building. And that’s when we saw the plane at the end of the airstrip. having just careened off to the side, through a fence, its front landing gear snapped and nose dug into the dirt, but otherwise intact. It came to rest, literally, not more that 30 feet from the back of a row of bungalows.  Employees, seemingly all of them, were running about, arms flailing, and screaming “Sweet Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, no!”

At that moment there was no way of knowing if anyone aboard the plane was injured or worse. And the immediate fear of fire or explosion was uppermost in everyone’s mind. Barbara, our traveling companion, who is also a nurse practitioner, sprang into gear and offered her medical services—repeatedly but nobody seemed to be in charge. A tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire prevented anyone from running onto the runway to help. Employee cell phones immediately began ringing as family and friends from all over the island began calling to check on their loved ones, which was certainly understandable in such a small community. A few more minutes passed before an older model fire truck emerged and made its way down the runway. But by the time it reached the plane, people were opening doors, jumping down to the wing, and lifting their children to safety. That sight alone, seeing people deplane, turned tears into smiles followed by shouts of praise to the Almighty by islanders and airport workers alike.

No one’s in charge

By now any semblance of order had evaporated. All of us, passengers, employees and a handful of island folk who had rushed to the terminal were mulling about, walking back and forth through security as the metal detector beeped and blinked away with nobody paying attention. I walked back  inside to get my photo gear and returned to the front of the building when it dawned on me…with the tail of the damaged plane protruding into the only runway, we weren’t going anywhere. We were stranded on Union Island with no way off and no way to catch a connecting jet some eighty miles east in Barbados.

It was a beautiful sight to see the passengers on the crashed plane slowly walk up the runway in our direction before disappearing into a room on the other side of the terminal. And within a few minutes more, another unexpected sight appeared….

…which I’ll share in my next post.

Trash and Church

Who’d ever think that I’d want to write about church and trash and put those thoughts in the same sentence? But here it is.

While vacationing recently, I paid a driver to take me around Union Island (in the Grenadines) so that I could photograph things of interest to me. Like many small islands, faith communities are the life-blood of local folk and this island had it’s share of churches and places of worship, representing an array of choices for people of faith. After photographing five or six such places I noticed something in each photo, sometimes tucked in one corner but still visible, other times smack-dab at the bottom of the front steps. Trash cans! There they were in front of five of the six churches I shot!

I asked my driver about it. He smiled and said thoughtfully, “Some people have  no manners and they leave their garbage all over the place. So if there’s a barrel nearby people will use it, we hope.”

Metaphorically speaking I said, “In a way, I think placing trash buckets in front off all churches everywhere would be a good thing.” Samuelson, my driver, seemed to get what I was saying as he nodded, “Yes, why not?”

And I was off with that nugget stuck in my head.

Whatever it is that draws, drives or compels people of faith to worship together, wouldn’t we be better off if we off-loaded our “trash” on the way in the door instead of taking it in with us? Or, as we exit, fortified by whatever it is that happens to us as a result of attending services, if we dropped what we don’t need or whatever it is that holds us back and weighs us down, into that trash can as we walked down the outside steps, wouldn’t we feel lighter all week long?

Well, you get the idea. But something tells me that it will be a cold day in hell before Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City ties a garbage barrel to the railing of their front steps, or that one will appear anytime soon outside our plain little Quaker meetinghouse.

One wonders why.

 

Photo and text by Kevin Lee

Men High Up

Sooner or later the cramp of sitting through a four hour flight
gives way to nature’s call for relief and two men find themselves
standing and waiting for the restroom in the middle of a hundred passengers who are
so bored that anything will amuse them. And these two guys did
not disappointment.

One of the men, the rounder shorter of the two attempts to open the
accordion-style bathroom door so he can enter, but nothing happened. So now with both hands, he gives a decisive push since figuring a bit of brawn  might be all that’s needed.

Still nothing.

The other guy, offering help, points to the hip-high slide handle and says, ”Slide the lever to the right and she should open,” which he does, but still, the door’s not budging.

“Oh for God’s sake,” says the taller man laughing, “The sign says push in!” and so he does while the shorter rounder man is dutifully trying to push the lever to the right. By now they’re making quite a racket tugging and pushing on the metal door that is not moving.

Finally the flight attendant glides down the isle and says,
”Look at that. Two grown men can’t get either lavatory open!”

“Two? There are two?” says the rounder man.

By now, having set the stage for an eager audience six rows deep, she says smoothly,
”Yes. There are two. The second one is right behind you.” But before either man
could react with proper embarrassment she reached her arm out and extended a finger
for the men to follow with their eyes and pointed upward to the lav that would not open, saying next, ”And this sign, gentlemen, in bright red letters reads, OCCUPIED!”

Kevin Lee