I n the bygone age of my youth when suburban parents still saw their task as character building the rule for summer jobs was more or less: the harder and more unpleasant the better. As a columnist I’ve somewhat adopted the “even a bad experience is a good experience” rule for new purposes: “Even a miserable experience is still a potential column.”
Let me give an example. In February I had the boarding gate door slammed in my face at LAX. My despair was twofold. I had to get to Seattle for an interview the next morning with talk-show host Michael Medved along with a speech that evening. But the airline could not even assure me a place on any flight before my scheduled departure from Seattle to London two days later.
That was the least of it. That morning my wife and I had agreed to disagree about how early she needed to be at LAX before her flight back to Israel and we had ended up traveling separately to the airport. Truthfully I had arrived at the airport in plenty of time but I underestimated how much time I would need to wait for a shuttle bus to a distant gate — in the perpetually “under repair” airport — and had treated myself to a leisurely Minchah. Nevertheless I knew I would have nothing to say the next time the subject of “time needed to arrive in advance of international flights” arose.
By the time I was next able to speak to my wife she was home in Jerusalem and I had managed to arrive in Seattle flying standby on a later flight. She was kind enough not to mention our disagreement. No need to rub it in. But she did finish with a typically astute observation. “Anyway you were probably already writing one of your ‘shlemazel in the airport columns’ before you had even boarded for Seattle.” She was right about that.
