Welcome to my Sunday Morning

This past Saturday night I had set my alarm for 3:30 am in order to be awake to take my neighbor John and his children to the Islip Airport for their 6am flight to California Sunday morning. They were going on a cruise to Alaska from there.

This was no problem for me since I am a morning person and am my sharpest and nicest in the early hours. I love mornings.

I drove to John's house and got there at 3:45. The kids were excited and were showing me some of their new clothes and sneakers they got for the trip. We all loaded ourselves and the luggage into John's 8 seater minivan and left to pick up their pastor and pastor's wife, Jay and Lena (not their real names to protect the guilty), they were going on the cruise as well.

Jay and Lena are not morning people at all. In fact, I used to be close friends with Lena years ago and although we grew apart, I still vividly remember how she could not wake up before 10am on any given day. Their church services start at 11am each Sunday just to accommodate her.

Jay and Lena have a daughter, Lisa. Lisa works for me as a receptionist. She is supposed to be at work at 9am to start answering the phones. She can only get there at 9:30am, no earlier because she cannot get up before then. Up until 11am she is dragging herself around, we don't talk to her much until after 11 when she gets perky and is a wonderful person to be around. There have been many meetings with the firm's partners to discuss terminating Lisa because of her tardiness, but she honestly is the best receptionist that ever worked there, so we keep her and answer the phones ourselves until she drags herself in. She's that good.

So at 4:45am we all leave Jay and Lena's house and head out for the airport. We get there at 5am, one hour before their flight is scheduled to leave, hey whatever, it I were on the flight I would have been there hours ago. After we say our goodbyes, I get into the driver's seat and proceed to drive back to John's house to pick up my SUV. I can't wait to get back to the comfort of my bed. It's 5:30 and I get into my house, take off my shoes and grab my cellphone. As I am pressing the off button I think to myself, "I don't want anyone to bother me because I want to sleep real late this morning...maybe until 8" when it goes off.

It's John. "Theresa, this is an emergency. The plane is about to board and Jay forgot his passport. He absolutely needs his passport to go on the cruise. Can you drive to his house, wake up Lisa so she can let you in, get his passport from his file cabinet and get it over to the airport ASAP?" "Sure", I say and off I went. All I can think of is how Lena must feel. She's kinda high strung and easily upset. Knowing her I'm sure she was yelling at Jay right then and I'm sure she's creating a big scene at the terminal.

I got to their house in record time and started beeping my horn in the driveway. I found a screwdriver on the porch and used the handle to start banging on the window of Lisa's bedroom and the side of the house and front screen door. The dogs were barking and going crazy inside. I started screaming, "LISA, LISA, OPEN THE DOOR, IT'S AN EMERGENCY", to no avail. About 10 minutes of this and Lisa comes to the door yelling at me, "THERESA. THEY'RE NOT HERE!!!!" I scream, "JUST LET ME IN, I NEED TO GET YOUR DAD'S PASSPORT". "I CAN'T OPEN THE DOOR", she yells back. "Lisa, I know you're half asleep right now but understand that your parent's can't go on the cruise if I don't get the passport RIGHT NOW, so OPEN THE DOOR" finally she opens the door, I hand her my cellphone so she can listen to her mom try to get her to calm down and I make a mad dash to the file cabinet. All the time she is yelling at me and being very nasty. She was even cursing at me, but she looked like she was sleep walking while she was doing all this.

I find the passport, yank my cellphone out of her hands and run down the driveway and get to the airport by 5:50am. Jay is waiting outside for me so as I screech to a stop, I roll down the passenger's side window and hand it off to him.

Now you would think that Jay would yell something like, "Thanks T" as he's running back into the airport to make the best use out of the precious seconds he has.....but NO!!! He slowly leans over the passenger's side window rests on his elbows and starts talking, very slowing, "Theresa,..... my angel ....
of .....mercy,.....thank......" I abruptly interrupt him with, "JAY, GET YOUR ASS INTO THE AIRPORT" as I stretch out my arm back and forth like a crazy woman, pointing the way to him. I'm sure I committed some violation of the 10 commandments with that comment to the pastor, but what the heck?

Later on that evening I got a call from John and I wasn't about to answer it. Hey, you can't blame me, he could have been calling to ask me to fax something somewhere or even worse. But he left a pleasant voice mail message telling me that Jay got into the plane 30 seconds before they shut the door. And they are on the ship and having a blast.

Today I went to work and met up with Lisa. She could not stop apologizing to me for being nasty. I kept telling her I understand, that I know some people are cranky in the morning, but she was really upset and thought that I was mad at her. When it was time for her to leave work she meekly came into my office and apologized again, this time with tears in her eyes. I told her to stop it, don't mention it again and forget about it. This is what makes a good story to tell your kids someday....the time I yelled and screamed at my boss like a lunatic while she was trying to do my parents a big favor.

Now that I think about it, she did get to work earlier than usual, hmmmm, maybe there is a happy ending for ME after all.