Right outside my window, on the plane that would take me to Paris, rain poured down in sheets. The runway was so flooded that the little cars carrying luggage were too small to operate. Had a person been standing outside in this torrential downpour, they would have water up to their ankles.
However, we were stuck.
The storm had been a real surprise, as when we had been entering the plane, the skies were a glassy blue, and the sun had been just rising over the tree-clad horizon. Then, like someone had flipped a switch in the heavens, the rain had begun.
But it was too late, as we had already left the loading dock. We were trapped in a plane in the middle of a storm. But could it be classified as a storm? There was no lightening. As far as I could tell there was no wind.
People around me were doing their own things, some talking animatedly on sleek black cell phones, informing bosses and loved ones that the plane was stuck. Others were soothing children who had begun to panic. And I was just glaring out the window, waiting for a reply to the angry text I had sent to my mother about a half an hour ago.
When your family has an intervention for you, it's embarrassing enough. But it's even worse when it's about work.
I'm not an alcoholic, nor do I use drugs. Nope, my fabulous family was worried about the number of hours I worked. It wasn't even that bad. Maybe I stayed late 9/10 times I was given the opportunity, and maybe I used my spare time to ensure that everything would go well at work the next day, but that was just me.
Being a lawyer was difficult, and required time and energy that few people had the patience to give.
But I could give that patience. I could be like a nurturing mother to my job, making sure that there were no bumps along the way. I had worked hard enough to solidify my job at one of the most prestigious law firms in New York.
And then, one fateful night about two weeks ago, my family all piled into my luxury apartment (uninvited, might I add), and told me that I needed a break.That at the age of twenty four, I shouldn't have been wasting my youth on work.
So we made a deal.
I would leave America and have the vacation of a lifetime for a whole month, and then they would leave me alone. They would stop pestering me about how many hours a day I worked.
It had been a rough day, and my inner-retard had decided to come out and do the bargaining for me.
I fell asleep knowing that the next day I would have to call me boss, requesting a whole god damned month of leave. His reaction was what had shocked me the most.
You see, when I had woken up the next morning, I had pretty pissed with myself for not putting up a bigger fight. But then I had reasoned, and figured that there was no way in hell that my boss would allow such a thing. He was like my last line of defense, my only hope and all that jazz.
Imagine my surprise when he had laughed over the phone and told me that it was about time.
About time for what?!
So in the end, I had been forced on vacation.
And someone up there was punishing me for even attempting to step foot out of my cosy office. It was pouring, and my brain was taking the delay as a sort of last-minute excuse to leap off the plane like it was on fire and run back to the office.
An hour and a half later, the rain turned into a light drizzle. Almost as if the staff of JFK international airport had installed a huge drain on the runway, the water started to disappear. And I was left miserable.
