I boarded my first plane in 2007; I was headed to Oregon to see my brother. I was a little nervous; I had never been on a plane before. Plus, I was traveling by myself. When I got to my seat, my row was empty. It wasn’t long before a guy my age came up to my row and smiled down at me.

“I’m sitting next to you,” he said.

I got up and let him get to his seat. I had noticed he was traveling with a friend, but his friend’s seat was across the aisle from us. The guy beside me was friendly but not like stalker friendly. As the plane began to fill up, my anxiety got worse. Now the thoughts of being thirty thousand feet up in just a few minutes started to chip away at my calm. I took a few deep breaths and watched as people fought with their luggage.

Then I started thinking, which is a bad idea. What if the plane went down? This thing is huge and heavy; how does it stay up? If it does crash, probably won’t survive it. What if we hit a storm? What does turbulence feel like? Lost in my thoughts I didn’t realize I had clinched down on my seat.

“Is this your first flight?” the guy asked.

I looked over to see him smiling at me. Look bud, not interested. I’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.

“Yeah.”

Call me chatty Kathy.

He fiddled with his stuff while I went back to my terrifying ‘what if’ game. I noticed he kept looking over me at something.
Curious I glanced over the aisle to see his friend ordering an alcoholic beverage. Sir, I may join you. I noticed the guy beside me giggle. Upon closer inspection his friend didn’t look so well. I thought I was nervous, but this guy took the cake.
Then the thought struck me, what is he so nervous about? Does he know something I don’t? So now I had something new to worry about. This is going well.

Then I remembered something my brother always said, “Thank you for flying Miracle Airlines, where Lady Luck is your copilot.”

Of all the times to remember that, it had to be now.

Then the pilot came on the speaker and announced we were departing; which meant it was too late to run. We soared into the air and I handled it better than I thought I would. I apparently didn’t look like it though because when the guy beside me looked over at me, he seemed concerned.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Man, can I hold a conversation.

About five minutes into this four-hour flight, the guy beside me looked over me again towards his friend and laughed. Shaking his head, he looked down at the floor. I glanced over to find this gentleman was now lit; three sheets to the wind, hammered, sloshed, wasted. How ever you want to put it. But he was smiling and not as nervous as before. How in the world did he get that way off one bottle, I thought? Then I looked down at his tray to see he had ordered several more while I wasn’t looking. About thirty minutes into the flight I decided to put my headphones in, a little distraction would help get my mind off crashing. Wouldn’t you know, on the very playlist I brought with me, was Ron White’s skit; Near Miss Plane Crash. Nope. That’s funny on the ground but not up in the air. I jerked my headphones out of my ears and grabbed a magazine out of the seat.

The guy next to me spoke again; I think he asked me where I was going. At this point, I was desperate, so I decided to be social. For the next three hours we had a nice chat about a little bit of everything. I think he knew it was helping so he kept talking. Bless him. But as I sat there, I got more and more uncomfortable. You see, I had to pee when I boarded the plane. Three hours ago. I decided to hold it though, until I got to the next airport. I didn’t want to chance crashing because I got up and moved. But I was now three or four Sprite’s in, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

New to the whole plane thing, I had to get him to help me move my table so I could get up. But what do I do with my Sprite?

“Can you hold this?”

“Yeah,” he said grabbing the can.

As I sat there in the narrow bathroom, I was reminded that I was a tad claustrophobic. Not to worry though, I was distracted by sudden turbulence. It wasn’t a rocking the boat type turbulence however; it was more along the lines of mayday-mayday, bend over and kiss your butt goodbye turbulence. You know, the kind that throws you up against the walls. Then it stopped. I quickly gathered my self and bounced out the door. I was halfway down the aisle when we hit more turbulence. I grabbed onto the seats as I bounced down the aisle. I looked up just in time to see this guy laughing at me from our seats. Not funny. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten up.

I finally made it back to my seat. He handed my drink back as I yanked my seat belt tight. He was still laughing. I took a sip of my drink and suddenly, every movie, TV show, and news report I had ever seen or read, flashed across my mind. All of them were about people who slip things into your drink in order to kidnap you. I discreetly spit it back out into the can and sat it down. I can wait to get another drink at the airport. I didn’t even know this guy's name. Well, he told me earlier but with everything that had happened, I had already forgotten. I wasn’t taking any chances.

We finally landed. Soon after that, he looked over at me and said, “See, it wasn’t that bad. Was it?”

​Oh, it was a blast, sir.

Every summer, my whole family would load up and spend a weekend or two at the lake. We’d find a spot, pop up our tents, rig up our tarps, and fish and swim the weekend away. I was very young during these times and I loved doing this.
One summer day, I remember riding up to the island where we were going to camp. It was a hot day and the breeze felt nice; the water splashing up in our faces as the boat sailed across the water was even better. As we came up to the island, I noticed a dead fish floating on top of the water.

That was weird, I thought to myself but quickly shook it off. We were here! Little did I know that fish was an omen.

We spent the day splashing in the lake and when nightfall came, we popped our tents up. There were three of them. We also tied our tarps up in the trees to keep the rain from ruining our stuff overnight. I know now rain was the least of our worries.  I remember glancing across the lake, right before the sun completely disappeared. There, floating in the water across from me, was that same fish.

Again, I shrugged it off and crawled inside my tent. Everyone settled in for the night; the campfire was still going but it wasn’t blazing by any means. I had laid there about ten minutes when everyone in the second tent started screaming.

There was a commotion and the adults in my tent jumped up to see what was happening.

Apparently, the others had built their tent on an ant hill; and the ants had found their way inside to deliver swift retribution. I remember hearing them scooting their tent across the sand as they knocked ants off them. Once they relocated, everyone settled in again.

Maybe about twenty minutes later, there was more yelling, and people were scurrying out of their tents in a hurry. I remember looking outside the tent door to see our campfire engulf something in the flames. Turns out one of the tarps we had rigged fell into the fire. So, everyone was rushing down to the shore to get water. One of the younger kids there had run to a steep part of the bank. When she bent down to get water in her can, she toppled over into the lake, prompting one of the adults to jump in after her.

I promise you; we aren’t as ignorant as we seem.

After the fire was out and the kid was in dry clothes, we again laid down for the night. I had drifted off at some point. The sound of the waves crashing onto the shore has always been peaceful to me. The boats in the distance traveling across the lake also lulled me to sleep. We had tied our boat to the large tree that had fallen into the water right up again the island. I remember hearing our boat rocking back and forth as the waves moved it. Usually, there weren’t a lot of boats that traveled through the water at night. But tonight, there seemed to be a few. It was one of those boats that woke me up. Its distant motor quickly got louder as it rushed by our island, stopping only when it CRASHED into the tree our boat was tied to. How no one heard it but me is something I haven’t been able to figure out to this day.

I laid there and listened as two men FELL off their boat. They stumbled onto the island. In their drunken state they tried to whisper but it wasn’t working. At least they tried to be respectful.

“Don’t tell my mom I dropped my phone.” One of them said.

He stumbled by our tent and relieved himself close by. He fumbled back towards the shore, and I listened as the two of them tried to figure out how to get their boat away from the tree trunk. I heard phrases such as, “Not that way,” “Help I’m stuck,” “The waters cold!” There was a lot of splashes as they fumbled around. Finally, their boat started up again, and they were gone.

The next morning, I pulled myself out of the tent, amazed at what I had heard the night before. Everyone was up and moving around; my mom and some of the others had started fixing breakfast. I looked out over the water just as that fish made another circle around our island. At that time, I didn’t know what an omen was, but I was pretty sure that fish had a lot to do with everything that had happened so far. The last straw for that particular camping trip, however, was when my brother’s girlfriend passed out while cooking our breakfast. She was standing there with a carton full of eggs when she fainted dead away, dropping and cracking all of them on the ground.

We loaded up then and road back to the dock. Message received. 

A few years ago, I learned a very valuable lesson —basically, I can’t take drugs.

Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me explain. I was going about my business that faithful day when I started to feel rough. My sinuses were killing me and to make matters worse, this sinus infection that I suddenly developed, made my teeth hurt. All of them.

I took some allergy medicine and went about my business. The pain got worse with each passing hour; not so much the sinuses but my teeth were killing me. Around 4pm that day, I couldn’t take it. Something was wrong. So, we went to the closest walk in clinic we could find. Being in the pharmacy field for a while I knew that something was wrong, and I needed an antibiotic. I told the doctor there what was going on and explained the pain I was in, I told her I needed some type of antibiotic.

She apparently didn’t believe me, and I walked out without an antibiotic. I went home and told my husband I was going to try to sleep it off. I couldn’t. It hurt so bad I wanted to cry but I knew if I did, it would make it hurt more. Around 1am I woke my husband up.

Nudging him in the dark I whispered, “Hey, I can’t take this. I think we need to go to the ER. The pain is getting worse.”

He roused quickly, “Okay.”

I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark while he got dressed, wishing the pain would go away. To be honest, I was beginning to get very worried. What in the world could be wrong with me? It was then my husband flipped the light on. As his eyes adjusted and he took me in, he froze. The look on his face was terrifying.

“Oh my—”

Well, that helps. Now I’m panicked.

“What? What is it?” I asked startled.

“Nothing,” He’s a terrible liar, “You’re fine.”

I didn’t like where this was going, at all. He started motioning me to get up and get dressed. He was rushing around grabbing my stuff.

“What’s wrong?” I asked again, this time more urgently.

“Nothing,” he said turning on the lights to the rest of the house, “We’re just going to get you to the ER.”

“Why?”

I was passing by the mirror in confusion, when I caught a glimpse of myself. The left side of my face was so swollen it looked like I had a baseball inside my cheek.

I don’t do well under pressure or emergency situations. I’ll just leave that right here.

I screamed and cried all the way to the car. Then I got in the car and screamed and cried all the way to the hospital. I was crying when I went inside; I was crying when I filled out paperwork. It also didn’t help that EVERY person I met had the same alarmed expression on their face, which they quickly hid away with a fake smile. Not appreciated.

When they got me into the back they discovered through x-rays and MRI’s that I had an abscessed tooth. It was so swollen
(the worst they had seen, what can I say, I’m an over achiever) that it was now cutting off my airways.

I spent the night there, with my husband by my side. I had an IV of high-powered antibiotics and an IV of morphine. It was 4mg’s of morphine, diluted. Remember that part please. To give you an idea of how painful this abscess was, I still hurt after the morphine was in my system. I just didn’t care. Then came dawn and they took the IV’s out and started the paperwork to release me. I was told that once the infection was gone, I would have to have the tooth pulled. Yay me.

Oh, but boys and girls, the fun was just beginning. I hadn’t peed all night. So, when I got off the bed I told my husband that before we left, I HAD to use the bathroom.

He walked me to the ER bathroom there by the nurse’s station and waited for me outside the door. Once inside, I sat down to do what nature intended. Thank goodness I had finished my business before I started shaking. I’m not talking about shaking because I was cold or nervous, it was the type of shaking everyone avoids. I was about to pass out. I could feel it. No matter how hard I tried, I was headed for the tile floor-face first if I didn’t do something quickly. It was then, I noticed a chain on the wall beside me and was labeled emergency. Welp, this was it.

I yanked on it with everything I had in me while still holding myself on the toilet. My husband peeked in the door confused.

“Are you okay?”

“No, come here.” I managed.

He shut the door behind him and pulled me up quickly. Annnnd—I passed out. Standing there in all my glory, in this small-cold ER bathroom, limp and lifeless, I dangled there in my husband’s arms.  It wasn’t until my husband spoke that I came out of it. (All you newlyweds, here’s a glimpse into your future.)

“What are we doing?” He asked confused. He told me later he thought I just wanted a hug, so he hugged me.

When he helped me walk back to the gurney, the nurse caught sight of me and I heard her say, “Oh no, get her back down.”

As I was laying there trying to suck down a small carton of apple juice, the nurse checked my vitals.

“Sometimes,” the nurse explained, “Morphine can make you pass out.”

​No kidding.

The phone had rung off the hook, which is basically a normal day in the pharmacy. This time when the phone rang, I answered on the first ring.

“_____ pharmacy, this is Laura, how can I help you?”

A phrase I utter a hundred times a day. A normal answer to this would be one of the following.

I need to fill my prescription.

What time do you close?

I need to speak with the pharmacist.

And the occasional, do you have XL condoms? And before you ask, no. No, we don’t.

This time however, I was met with something very unexpected. A woman whispered into the phone seductively, “Do you
want shrimp with white sauce?”

I went from your friendly neighborhood technician to I don’t think so, real quick.

“I’m sorry?” I uttered.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure I had heard it right. And if I did, was I being propositioned?

The woman on the other end wasn’t so hushed and seductive anymore, “Is this Laura?” She asked, flabbergasted.

“Yes—”

Where was this conversation headed, I wondered? And who is this and how did they find me?

“Laura T?” She asked, sounding a little nervous now.

“No, I’m new here,” I explained, “I’m Laura M.”

“Oh my gosh! Can I talk to the other Laura please?” The woman asked.

“Sure, hold on.”

I put her on hold and turned to the other Laura, “I think the phone is for you.”

She answered and immediately started laughing. When she ended the call, she explained that it was her mother on the other line, asking if she wanted shrimp and white sauce for lunch.

Well, at least I heard it right.