Stuck in Maryland

I got bumped from my flight back to New Orleans tonight, but now I have a confirmed seat tomorrow afternoon (thus allowing me to get in early enough to grab dinner from Zara’s) and a free round-trip voucher, good for a future speaking invitation that doesn’t comp my airfare (hint, hint).

However, I was able to contact the guy who covered for me last Friday to see what exactly he got through, check my syllabus for planned topics, get someone else to cover for me tomorrow, and compose a sketch of some lecture notes for him on the fly, and finish it all by the time I walked off the metro in College Park. And some of you scoffed when I was excited about buying my iPhone.

Still, I saw very early on that there was nothing I could gain by arguing or begging for information from the agents, and the dust didn’t really settle until half an hour or so after the flight was supposed to have left. If I’d known right away that they were 15 seats overbooked on an 80-seat plane I might have volunteered earlier and committed myself to jury-rigging something for tomorrow. Then I’d have been out of there that much sooner and not just getting back to my parents’ house now. Still, I was (uncharacteristically) the most relaxed person at the gate tonight. Not a bad place to be.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man my son!

— Rudyard Kipling, If