The Coup de Grace

Coup de grace: A death blow to end the suffering of a severely wounded person or animal.

I thought that I had moved past my resentment at having to travel back to The Old City for reasons that aren't pleasing to me.  And it is, of course, all about me and my comfort.

Complicating matters is the fact that The Old City has kind of a minor league airport that nonetheless manages to sustain the highest average fares of any airport serving a major city, and it has held this distinction continuously for many years, except for the odd occurrence of dropping down into second place.  In this case the statement: "We're Number One!" holds little appeal unless you're the one major airline servicing the place.  They're probably tickled pink at this award.

For a while I could get a reasonable flight out of a regional airport near my home but the dominant airline obviously killed this option as it vanished from the metaphorical radar screen, and went the way of the great woolly mammoth.  Now I have to take an expensive shuttle a couple of hours down to the main airport servicing Vacation City.  This adds a nice chunk of money that I have to spend on this trip that I don't want to take in addition to the two extra hours.  And because I'm heading into a minor league airport after 11PM all but a few of the biggest car rental places will be closed.  In lockstep with the dominant airline these guys are comfortable charging an amount in the neighborhood of a down payment on a Maserati to rent a Ford Focus.  All in all, I'd rather fork over the down payment for a Focus and get a Maserati instead but that isn't coming up on the Options list.

My sister, with whom I have a pleasant but distant relationship, will not pick me up, has never picked me up, offering a panoply of excuses.  I wish she'd just say: "Naw, don't feel like it."  It would be easier for me to accept than half-baked and lukewarm excuses.

Note to self: try to tell the truth more often.  Sometimes would be a goal to shoot for.

I'm kind of shit out of luck here.  I can take a very expensive cab; I can sit at the airport for 5 hours until the fucking car rental place opens; or I can rent a hotel room.  I'm leaning hotel because this would pack the greatest passive-aggressive wallop while costing the least amount of money.  It's not like I'm in a big hurry to see these people.

The coup de grace is that I doubt I get to accomplish any of the tasks I'm going back to accomplish.  This, in and of itself, is OK - after all I'm there to help others, not to complete my agenda.  I don't think the coup is a mean-spirited one - I think these people are not thinking of me at all.  Unfortunately, I foresee at some point, a phone call asking me to come back to help them accomplish the very same things that I want to accomplish this trip but will certainly be thwarted from accomplishing.  These things require a bit of planning to finish off and I don't think any planning is going on.

There's a great Seinfeld episode where Jerry buys dinner for a guy that he doesn't like to repay a debt.  The guy shows up, says he isn't hungry, that he had a hot dog earlier, and he orders soup, which isn't really dinner, to his thinking, so the debt still stands.

"No," Jerry says.  "Who told you to have a hot dog?  This is the dinner."

"This is just soup," the guy protests.  "That's not a dinner."

"So order anything you want," Jerry says. "This is the dinner!"

It's not a good thing when a Seinfeld episode serves as one's model for good living.