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Misplaced (1/3): Unaccompanied Minor

Misplaced
Part 1: Unaccompanied Minor

The one thing you can say about travelling is that it will give you life experience, the kind that you can’t get on books or in a classroom. On many occasions you will have to improvise, adapt and be quick on your feet to respond to a particular situation. Something you’ll also get, as a byproduct of this life experience is a Story to tell: yours. Some will be of triumph and some will be of defeat, but you can be sure most of them will be very good tales.

Throughout my travels I’ve accumulated a nice collection of stories, both of adventure and the occasional misfortune, and now as I build my literary voice I am also beginning, little by little, to tell them all. The story I’m going to tell you today is one of my favorites of all time, although it didn’t take place during the first time I left the country I was still very, very young and I think we can think of it as my first big travel memoir: there is chaos, colorful characters, moments of doubt and many reasons to laugh…indeed, what a story it was.

Without further delay I give you Misplaced. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I had to go through it.

~

What is your best travel-related horror story? Did the Airline loose your luggage? Were you stuck in an airport for over 20 hours? Maybe the immigration officer pulled you aside for questioning or perhaps you lost your passport in a place where you didn’t speak the language. Whatever your own horror story is, I ask you to take a moment, multiply it a few dozens times and try to envision the following: how would you feel, what would go through your mind if, during a scheduled trip from Paris to Mexico City via Chicago, your 11-year-old child who is travelling alone were, quite simply, to disappear; and not a single person entrusted with his care was able to tell you where he is.

That is what happened to me. Well, not exactly; that’s what happened to my mom when both the airline and the travel agency misplaced me on the way home after a 6-week summer language camp in France.

This is how it all happened.

~

The year was 1999 and I had just turned 11. It must have been sometime between late July and early August, as I had almost no time to rest before going back to school upon my return to Mexico. The language summer camp had run its course and it was time to go home. Me and several other students were amongst the last to leave since we had stayed the longest, out of the usual 4 weeks we had been there for 6 and some even for 8. There were not many of us, true warriors indeed.

On the day of departure a bus would take us all the way from Normandy to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. I don’t remember much of the way into the city, so let’s say I slept for most of the way into the city. We had a whole bus to ourselves, probably around 8 to 10 people, so it is safe to assume the ride was comfortable.

Once we got to the airport, the camp counselor took us one at a time into the terminal to help us check-in, remember we were still kids. Little by little the bus began to depopulate and somewhere along the way my turn finally came. I said my goodbyes, got my luggage and stepped out of the bus and into the terminal to look for the Air France counters.

It is the most amusing thing to see how, in many cases, a story begins to be told not by the characters but by the context itself: little subtleties and details along the road that but more often than not, can only been or be made sense of when you look back at the road behind you and not a moment before

After queuing for a few minutes we were finally called to the next available counter. I took out my passport and handed it over. The lady on the other side of the desk didn’t seem to register a kid was checking-in. She probably assumed the one traveling was the camp counselor, since she addressed him instead of me. He laughed a bit and told her I was the passenger. She apologized, smiled at me and began to log my information on the computer. Where are you travelling to? she asked. I told her I was transiting through Chicago on my way home to Mexico City and that I had a visa so there was no need to tag my ticket as a “TWOV” passenger (transiting without visa). She then inquired if I had any weapons or dangerous materials in my luggage: Just my laundry, I replied.

However something appeared to be out of place since the very beginning the journy, the Air France employee seemed confounded as the tried to check me in. Her subsequent question was one of the best I’ve ever been asked while in an airport, and let me tell you…I’ve been asked pretty weird stuff: Are you a minor? I smiled back at her and said: I think I am, but we can check my passport…you can see the smartass kicks in since a very tender age.

When a minor travels alone most airlines can usually provide additional assistance by taking care of him or her at all stages of the trip. You get some nice perks like kiddy food, maybe even some toys for the ride but the most important thing, at least for the parents anyway, is that airline staff will look after the child since the moment of check-in and until an adult picks up and signs for the youngster at the destination airport. This service, though, often requires advance booking and is subject to availability when checking-in. But back to my story…

After the lady finally realized she had Unaccompanied Minor in her hands she tried to find somebody who could take me to the gate and watch over me, but there was no one available. She got a bit nervous and tried to explain the situation; I told her it was no problem at all, I could take care of myself and find my way to the gate on my own. Are you sure? I reiterated: no problem.

Once we got that sorted out, kind of, I got my tickets, bag tags and my passport. We left the check-in area and the counselor and I said goodbye to each other before I went ahead to security. As in any other airport, before going through the metal detector and dumping my stuff in the X-ray machine, the officers asked for my ID and boarding pass.

They asked some of the usual things: where I was flying to and if I was staying in the US. As I said, nothing out of the ordinary. When everything seemed to be getting back on track they stopped me and once again inquired: are you a minor? are you alone? I thought about giving them a clever answer but saner heads prevailed, after all it probably wasn’t the best idea to be funny with the people who can deny you access to the plane. I responded affirmatively and was subsequently asked to wait by the side for a couple of minutes.

The whole “minor travelling alone affair” was starting to create quite the controversy. The officers made a few calls, probably to the airline desk, to find out what was going on. After learning I was all on my own (poor little old me) they asked me if I could make my way to the gate by myself. Again I told the officers I would be ok and I knew my way around the airport. Still the officers seemed a bit nervous and also unwilling to let me go but ultimately they described in detail the route I needed to take to the gate: “just keep going right” and let me go. Big deal.

Finally I made it to gate thirty-something. The flight was on time and there was nothing more for me to do but to sit down and enjoy a book while I waited. At least that was what I thought. Just moments after I sat down and started reading, my name was called out by Air France staff: “Passenger Rodrigo Sandoval, please approach the Air France desk”. That was a bit unusual and I wasn’t quite sure I had heard right so I waited until they called my name again, when they did I got up and went to see what it was they wanted. It turned out to be they needed clarify some issue with my information.

By now I’m sure you can imagine what they wanted to know: if was I was a minor and travelling alone. Again the answer was a big, fat yes. They were baffled and confused: they made some calls, checked things on the computer over and over again, talked to each other franticly but they couldn’t change the fact that I was on my own, no matter how hard they tried. So, in an effort to take control of the situation, I was asked to stay in their little cubicle until it was time to board. I guess one would have to excuse the frenzy since the airline was at least partially liable if anything happened to me because they had allowed an unaccompanied minor to be on his own. So, I obliged.

It is at this point in the story in which I met my supporting characters. Three old Mexican ladies who we shall call: The Three. Why the three? Well…because there were three of them and I can’t think of a more flamboyant name at the time of writing, maybe something will come up later on.

The Three, just like me, were on route back to Mexico through Chicago. The hay had spent the last few weeks vacationing all over France on a tour, which did not include any sort of guidance or assistance by Spanish speaking personnel while in transit, not such a good service after all. But unlike me they spoke no English nor French and did not have an American visa, causing them to be subject to special attention by the airline.

For the purposes of this discussion we were all on the same boat so I decided to make myself useful if they needed anything, especially in the language department. Why not? I thought to myself: they are alone, elderly woman who do not speak the language and they are also from Mexico. But remember, dear friends, that no good deed goes unpunished.

We sat in the little cubicle for a while, acquainting with each other. I translated any and all things the airline staff wanted to say to The Three and vice versa. At around 1:50 pm, boarding time began and we were among the first people to go in, right after the first and business class passengers. It was not all bad.

My seat wasn’t contiguous or in proximity of The Three but I told them I would check on them every once in a while in case they needed something. I know…I’m such a nice guy.

Moments after I took my seat I fell asleep. The flight was scheduled to leave at 3 pm so I figured by the time I woke we would be already in the air. By 4 pm I opened my eyes up and we were still at the terminal. No biggie, I thought and went back to sleep. Another hour passed and being 5 pm, the plane hadn’t left Charles de Gaulle. I didn’t go back to sleep that time. Apparently there had been both a small mechanical failure and some misunderstanding about flying into somebody’s airspace so the airplane could not be cleared for take off. In total, it took about two and a half hours for the plane to take its place in the runway and depart.

The flight was timed at approximately 9 hours, allowing The Three and me just under 3 hours to transfer to American Airlines and board our flight to Mexico. The only problem was that transiting through Chicago would require us to clear immigration and customs before being able to go to a different terminal, making the transfer all the more challenging and that small delay not so small down the road. Whether we would make our connection in time or not was still uncertain, but for the time being there was nothing I could do so I sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the flight.

One of the worse things that one can do is to waste time or have others waste it for you. Time is valuable, it is the means to and end and, ultimately, it is one of the few things we have that can serve no only ourselves. The problem with misusing it, is that losses in the system are not necessarily equal to the ill-invested asset, but almost always disproportionately larger. That is, wasting one hour of your time will not always bring an hour’s worth of reprisal; losses ripple along your path like a stone falling on water, growing in size as they creep through every step you take, even if it wasn’t your misstep that caused them.

The question was: what would be the price to pay for those two and a half hours lost?

Part II coming up

Good night and good luck

Rodrigo Sandoval Rivera
April 7th, 2013
Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia




This post first appeared on Aude Sapere | "Welcome To My House. Come Freely., please read the originial post: here

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Misplaced (1/3): Unaccompanied Minor

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