Yup. No kidding. Tonight couldn’t be any more shocking or crazy, at least in terms of how my life goes.
I spent most of the day studying for my infamous precalculus test (that I ended up getting a 68.9% out of 100 on – oops, gotta love those strict, online departmental math tests). Of course, knowing this, I’d already been a bit down to start with, but not too down. I know that I still have an opportunity to replace that ugly grade (if it remains to be my lowest of my precalculus test grades this semester) with the final in May. Surely I’ll be able to do that.
After bombing that test of a test, I decided to go and study for another test that I have tomorrow (but yet still haven’t finished studying for – another oops). That is, until I got a text from my mom telling me to call her ASAP because something urgent/hectic had happened with my dad. I could only wonder at the time what could’ve possibly gone down: Was he hurt? Was he at the hospital? Did he commit suicide? Did he get killed?
So, I called my mom and asked her what happened to my dad. She couldn’t really explain it to me at the time since there were so many details, so she then asked me to call my grandma to have her tell me more specifically what had been going on. I called my grandma, and the following is the shocking story that she unraveled to me.
This past Saturday, my dad had (apparently) been trying to get on a flight from Atlanta to Paris (for more spontaneous travel, I suppose?). The airport environment had already been crazy that day as it was. There was a bomb threat on one of the flights at the Atlanta airport and so airport security (the TSA) had to really scrutinize everybody going through security and just everybody at the airport in general. While this bomb threat had been going on, my dad (for whatever reason) decided to not go through airport security to catch his Paris flight. I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and he was successful. I also don’t know how, but the TSA found out about my dad skipping airport security, and went on the Paris flight (before it departed), got my dad out of the plane, and arrested him on the spot. My dad is a Delta employee, and so of course this makes the situation even worse than it would be for a regular person.
My dad is currently under FBI custody, and a few key things have resulted from this. Firstly, my dad’s job at the airport has been suspended for the next 30 days. He (and thus I) cannot travel anywhere internationally or even domestically until he gets his job situation back on track and after his charges are cleared from a local court in Atlanta. Secondly, and maybe even just as drastically, my dad’s passport has been confiscated by the FBI, and it’s more than likely that he will not get it back right away (meaning months). This means that the plan of my dad taking me to Budapest and then letting me go and visit my friends in Prague at the end of my spring break week in March is basically nullified, and it is heartbreaking because I’d really been looking forward to it. Moreover, I may or may not be able get my Russian visa, as we’d also been planning to go to Moscow in July. Though I don’t know exactly how long my dad’s passport will remain in the hands of the FBI, it can be assumed from the situation that it may be until summer until that point in time comes. I sure hope that’s the absolute worst case scenario, anyway…
Of course, to most people, this wouldn't be such a big deal because they don’t (and can’t) travel as easily and freely as we always have. The saying “once you go black, you can’t ever go back” applies loosely but significantly to this situation – once you experience the greatest of the good, you can’t simply just go back to experiencing the ordinary monotony of every day life. It’s like being utterly broke after getting used to having a million dollar salary. Anyway, I realize that I am already more fortunate than a huge fraction of people in the world, and that I have had experiences that many will never have the opportunity to have in their lifetimes. However, even my own luck is scarce, and thus for myself, I want to stick it out for as long as I can WHILE I still can. Right now, first and foremost, I am hoping and praying that my dad does not lose his job after the ridiculousness of his actions that happened at the airport. I really am.
It’s also funny how a few days ago, I’d been dwelling on the fact that I would one day lose my flight travel privileges and that the thought of it was devastating to me. Who knew that just a short time later I actually WOULD be dwelling on it? And being (although [hopefully] temporarily) devastated about it? Life is absolutely unpredictable sometimes and when you think that some things can’t and won’t happen to you, they do. At the end of the day, the moral of the story is to remember the things that we DO have, the things that we HAVE had, and the things that we WILL have as we continue the duration of our lives. No matter what happens with my dad, I know that it’s all meant to happen for a reason.
And, in time, I will know exactly what that reason is.