IS IT TOO HARD TO REMEMBER TO GAS UP THE PLANE?

OK, seriously, folks, (man i just can't leave the comedy-isms behind!) I was coming home to Little Rock Arkansas for the weekend. Not so much for Easter but because this year Easter is one of my brother's birthday and it's also going to be the first chance all my sibs and their families have been in one spot in years. So, tomorrow 17 people are waddling down to the Golden Corral or the Hometown Buffet or the Eat Like a Pig or the Hey Fatass! Buffet (the last two i made up, in case you can't tell) because my mom understandably doesn't want to cook anymore for giant groups of people.
But to get here, I had to fly. And to fly, most airlines would realize you kind of need to have gas. Well, apparently at Delta Airlines they forget that little detail and once everyone's seated and ready to get the hell out of LA, they make an announcement that there will be a "slight delay" because they "underestimated" how much gas they needed and they needed to fill 'er up!!! Well, I'm glad they figured that salient fact out before we achieved liftoff. Of all the stupid ways to ever crash in a plane, leave it to a flight I'm on to crash because they forgot to check the fuel levels. Brilliant!
So there i was, knowing that I had 45 minutes scheduled as is to make a transfer between planes in Salt Lake City. First of all, it's bad enough that i'm in friggin' UTAH on my way to ARKANSAS, but I for damn sure wasn't going to get stuck in Mormon country. But as we're finally off in the air, they announce we'll be landing at 9:39 in SLC. My flight to Little Rock is at 9:51. Do the math. There's no way on earth I should've made the next flight. It was two concourses away!!!
Well, maybe there's no way on earth, but God apparently decided to step in with a little help. When we hit our gate at SLC Airport, I leaped out of my seat shrieking "I don't think there's anyone else on here whose plane is leaving in 12 minutes, so gimme my bag!" Anyone who read about my brush with the LAPD will know I have a loud mouth and am not that discreet about using it. So everyone looked scared, but I was the first person off that plane.
Now all I had to do was run like O.J. to catch my flight. No, that doesn't mean I had to hop into a white Bronco for a slow-speed chase on the LA freeways. it's a reference to what in my mind was OJ's greatest career moment outside of playing Nordberg in the "Naked Gun" movies: his 1970s string of Hertz Rental Car commercials in which he ran through airports, leaping small children in a single bound.
Since i'm over 300 pounds, I wasn't going to run - even in this dire situation. So i walked as fast as i could and finally spotted a Southwest Airlines motorized buggy and begged my way onto it even though my flight was on Delta. What happened next was straight out of an '80s movie: a mad dash through the airport upending anyone and everyone you could imagine. We even drove the thing onto an ELEVATOR and rode down to another floor. These vehicles are HUGE, folks, and I thought we'd careen into the inner-elevator wall, break down the elevator and I'd spend the weekend building a polygamous harem in the mean streets of SLC.
But we made it down safely and were careening successfully through the crowds as people hopped out of the way in every direction. Just as we're passing Gate 8 (we had to hit 12!) some chick is shaking what she's got and totally ignoring that we're honking and yelling for her to get out of the way. The people around her end up saying "She's got her headphones on!" rather than tapping her and suggesting getting out of our way.
So my driver finally goes around her but we're moving slow due to the crowds. Just as we roll slowly past her I leaned out my arm and snapped my finger in her face as she shrieked and took off her headphones. I then said "Get a clue, sweetcakes!" to the amusement of some and the horror of others.
Best of all, the driver didn't just get me to the hall outside the gate, he drove on IN to the space and jerked to a stop right in front of the boarding pass lady. He then said, "This man has got to get on this plane!" I felt like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" as i made it through security and ran through the boarding doors just as they were closing.
I had made it and was feeling kind of like a badass at that moment. Then, I encountered the indignity of having to ask for a seat baelt extension so I could wrap the seat belt around me. I had just flown fine on Delta but on their sub contractor airline I was suddenly too fat.
If that's not incentive to lose weight, I don't know what is. It's almost as embarrassing as the time I wasn't allowed to ride a coaster at KNott's because the safety bar couldn't fit. I told the onlookers then that i was labeled too tall. I don't think one of them believed me. Not one.
Memories...