The Drama of Geezer Traveling

LITTLE OLD LADY, TRAVELING ALONE! OH THE HORROR!!

ITA Airlines flight tracker (Author photo)

Blood was beginning to drip across the marble tile. What can I say?

After a trip to Sicily with a short stop in Rome, I had made it without incident from my hotel to Rome Airport FCO Fiumicino well ahead of 7 AM for a 9:10 AM flight home. I found my way to the ITA Baggage Drop area to trade my one small bag for a boarding pass. That was when the drama began.

Reaching for my passport, and briefly forgetting about my cheap-tissue-paper skin — i.e., thinner than even the better quality tissue paper — I brushed the pocket of my backpack and came up with a half-inch gash across the top of my left hand.

If someone is trying to find a vein below my paper-thin skin when a blood test is required, good luck. Veins are nowhere to be found. But in the Baggage Drop area of Fiumicino Aeroporto, one small scrape and you’d think Vesuvius had just erupted in A-negative.

I had managed to grab some tissues from my pocket as the gusher began. But keeping it at bay required pressing one tissue, with my right hand, onto the back of my left. This left no available hand for doing stuff, and stuff needed to be done. I quickly attempted to wipe up the mess on the floor with the remaining tissues, deploying one foot before I ran out of appendages.

A horde of uniformed ITA people descended from nowhere. I had triggered the “Little Old Lady” alarm. I heard, for not the first of a zillion times in recent years, “Are you traveling alone?”

Ohforheavenssakes! At what age is it required that “Little Old Ladies” be accompanied by a “Keeper?” Admittedly, if I’d had a “Keeper” he or she would have produced the passport and avoided the whole drama. But still. The wound, which drew attention to my amply-wrinkled face, had triggered the “Little Old Lady Traveling Alone” alarm. The horde had taken over.

“No problem! No problem!” they were saying, guiding me onward and leaving the insufficiently wiped mess on the tile. Who cleans the floors at your houses? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. I watched politely as someone picked up my tiny carry-on (the under-seat size) and backpack and guided me onward, away from the unsightly splatters.

I had a Band-Aid in my backpack. All I needed was that one Band-Aid and I’d be on my way. I desperately wanted to shout, had anyone been listening, Could someone please just help me get the #$%&+ Band-Aid so I can have two hands again!?! But I didn’t. I had been trying very hard to represent the Friendly American despite our current unfriendly administration.

One young helper agent disengaged himself from the horde to take over my small bags — and me in the bargain. I began to understand I had an invisible tattoo, “LOL-TA.”

“The chair is coming,” said the polite young man. “Wait here.”

I was apparently to be wheeled off, through Passport Control and the two-mile maze I had negotiated on the trip through FCO Fiumicino from which I was now returning. It had been an altogether pleasant walk — but of course, I’d managed not to injure myself on that leg of the journey.

While waiting, I engineered a raised left-hand maneuver long enough to reach into my backpack and retrieve a Band-Aid. Problem solved. I was anxious to be on my way, but once a wheelchair-designate, always a wheelchair-designate. I waited, obediently. However, I noted with some relief watching other wheelchairs come and go, that Rome Fiumicino features motorized chairs complete with a platform in the back for the driver.

My only previous airport wheelchair experience was once when I was re-routed through Seattle with 20 minutes to make a connection. I had played the “LOL” card and requested a chair. It was operated by a frail woman in a hijab who whisked me through a complicated series of passages and elevators to deliver me at the gate with several minutes to spare — and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

At least this trip would be guilt-free. Eventually, it began via a motorized chair with a pleasant-looking young woman who maneuvered me into the seat with my backpack in my lap and the other bag on the platform beside her. We were through Passport Control in a matter of minutes and headed to the A — E Gates.

“I take you to your gate,” said my driver as we sped along. “E-23.”

“Umm, if you don’t mind,” I said, “could we go to the ITA lounge?” This seemed a reasonable request. We were now navigating the swirling mobs of E Gates, and I knew, indeed, that the lounge was within range. As I had tried in vain to explain ever since the wound incident, I had done this entire business just fine, on foot, “LOL-TA,” when headed in the other direction.

The lounge had great appeal. I had access to it thanks to having declared myself years ago too old to fly overseas any way except Business Class. The lounge, I knew, had breakfast choices and hot coffee (I now also know to ask for “latte con café” to avoid the 80-octane Italian drink) and bathrooms, not necessarily in that order of importance. I still had over an hour before boarding, and E-23 was without any of those niceties.

“I think E-23,” said my friendly driver.

What to do? We were speeding towards E-23, and it seemed my destiny. At E-23 we came to a stop. I was gingerly assisted in getting off the fancy wheelchair and handed my tiny bag plus my backpack. “Arrivederci,” we said.

When my driver was safely out of sight, I picked up my bags and made my way through the cosmetics area of a mid-gate shopping center toward the lounge about an eighth of a mile distant. (As I mentioned, I’d done this before.) There I found breakfast, coffee, bathrooms, and easy chairs; what’s not to love about airport lounges? It was now 8 AM. Boarding was advertised as beginning at 8:10.

I was enjoying my latte con café in an easy chair when a smiling young man in an ITA Assistant uniform appeared at my side. He was piloting a motorized wheelchair.

“I will take you to your gate,” he said. Maybe a tracking device had been attached to my forehead, just below the “Little Old Lady-TravelingAlone” tag?

By now I had learned not to argue with management. Feeling a little sheepish, after having zipped from breakfast bar to coffee to bathroom to easy chair and to and fro for an hour or so in front of all these other able-bodied people, I handed over my bags and arranged myself primly upon the wheelchair.

This report comes to you from Seat 3A, ITA Flight AZ 640 Rome to San Francisco, where I continue to be treated with the exquisite care accorded a “LOL-TA.”

Safely deplaned, unassisted (Author photo)