This was taking way too long.

Lauren Schroeder, please wait while we locate your itinerary… read the screen.

Thirty seconds had gone by. Next to me, two people had already checked in, printed their boarding passes and left for their gates.

A service agent saw me floundering. ”Do you need help ma’am?”

“Yeah, the computer isn’t finding my ticket. Could you tell me flight number for the flight to Milwaukee?”

“We don’t fly to Milwaukee, ma’am.”

“What?”

“American Airlines doesn’t fly to Milwaukee. Are you sure you’re flying with American?”

Uhh…

“Are you sure your destination isn’t maybe Chicago? We fly there.”

Uhh…

Could I have booked my ticket to Chicago? It’s not out of the ordinary for me to fly to Chicago and then hop a bus to Milwaukee. Tickets are often cheaper and Kirk’s rental property is there, so we make stopovers in Chicago pretty regularily… But not this time… No. This time I was going to see my family – in Wisconsin - I know I booked my ticket to Milwaukee… Right??

“Here, let me see if I can look you up. We do have some limited acess to other airlines’ databases… What’s your last name?”

“Uh, okaay… Schroeder?”

CLACK CLACK CLICKITY-CLACK. “Is your first name L – A – U – ?”

“Yeah, that’s me…?”

“Okay, here we go. You’re booked on a US airways flight to Milwaukee. You need to go down the stairs and all the way to the other end of the terminal.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. I got the airline wrong?

I left the counter, mouth still agape at my own brainlessness.

Very suave. You really nailed that one, didn’t you.

All I could do was laugh at myself. ☼