The trauma began as soon as we approached the Delta counter
at Miami International Airport. I was quizzing the customer representative
about my usual list of concerns:
Does the airplane have a toilet? How many years of
experience does the captain have? What if Delta is bought by Aeroflot in
mid-air? Do we have seats together? Do we have vegan meals?
She gave me sort of acceptable answers to the first
few questions but stumbled on the meals. She said that my wife Ora did have a
vegan meal booked but I did not. We were about to embark on a long trip to
Israel with a seven-hour layover in Newark, which is not known for its vegan
gourmet cuisine.
While I was going through divorce proceedings in my
head on account of Ora neglecting to order a vegan meal for me, the customer
service representative called on a senior person for help. After staring at the
screen for what looked like eternity, she finally said that I did have a vegan
meal on the flight from Newark to Tel Aviv. Ora smiled: “I told you that I
ordered vegan for both of us.”
The first flight was uneventful, but we arrived in Newark
quite hungry. The flight to Tel Aviv was departing in another seven hours, so
we decided to eat something. The closest to vegan food we found was a veggie
burger. After we explained to the waitress that we were vegan, and what that
meant, we waited for 45 minutes. Eventually she brought us two veggie burgers
smothered with cheese on top.
We told her that vegans do not eat dairy, but she probably
thought that cheese and dairy were two different things. We were so famished
that we decided to forego the ordeal of returning the burgers. We tried in vain
to peel off the cheese from top of the burger, which ended up eliminating 95
percent of our meal. At least we had vegan meals waiting for us on the flight
to Tel Aviv.
Although we sent two suitcases directly to Tel Aviv, I still
had to schlep four carry-on bags with rocks that Ora took for self-defense in
case a third intifada suddenly erupted in Israel. Looking forward to resting my
back, no sooner did I take my seat than two kids entertained themselves by
kicking the back of my seat. While I was fantasizing what I would do to these
kids, after the amputation, my vegan meal finally arrived, which guaranteed a
bit of distraction removing the foil, discovering what’s inside the little
plastic container, rearranging the little tray to make sure that nothing
spilled on my lap, and making sure that Ora did the same so no part of her food
ended on my lap either.
I usually calculate the digestive quotient of each meal by
examining its fiber content. It turns out that the only part with roughage in
our meal was the carton in which it came, which reminded me that I had not
brought with me Senocot or Metamucil. Not a good start for our visit to the
Holy Land.
We visit family in Israel often, so this time I came
equipped. On our trip last year I bought an Israeli cell phone for $50 which
was way cheaper than paying the usual $2,773 roaming charges from our stateside
service provider. Now when I come to Israel I just add minutes to the $50 cell
phone, and I’m in touch with all our relatives and friends. This, of course,
turned out to be a curse because I hate phone calls, especially to cell phones
because, as everybody knows, the radiation causes cancer, flat feet,
Alzheimer’s, blindness, and testicular evaporation. Every five minutes the
phone would ring with one of the following typical conversations:
Conversation No. 1:
Caller: What are you guys doing today?
Us: We are not sure yet.
Caller: Ok, we will call you in 10 minutes to plan the next
conversation in another 10 minutes until we figure out what we are doing today.
Conversation No. 2:
Caller: We will call you in five minutes to let you know if
in five minutes we are to ready to leave to pick you up.
Us: OK.
Conversation No. 3:
Caller: We thought we would be ready in five minutes but now
we will have to call you in five minutes to give you an update.
Us: OK.
Conversation No. 4:
Same caller, now from second car on a family trip: We made a
wrong turn and are headed for Syria.
Us in another car: Good luck. Make sure to stop for gas
masks.
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