Also, my seat did not exist on the plane.

When I finally actually woke up around noon today after my whirlwind weekend in The Hills and my ridiculously early flight yesterday morning (yes, I went to work this morning and I'm amazed at how much work I can do when I'm still mostly asleep), I remembered another important piece of my journey home yesterday.

My seat did not actually exist on the plane.

True, it was really, really, ridiculously early when I got on the plane yesterday. So at first I thought I was just confused and had discovered that I cannot read numbers before 6:30am. It took me several very long minutes to figure out that the seat listed on my boarding pass was not actually on the plane. And even then, I wasn't sure anyone would believe me if I tried to explain what I thought I was seeing.

But still, even in a sleepy, grumpy haze, I know that the correct order of things is NOT 9-12-11-12.

My seat was 10D. There was no 10D.

I watched the numbers on the seat rows as I walked by and I suddenly realized that 12 came, but I never saw 10. Then I was at 14, and that was just completely wrong. I must have gone too far. I had to turn around and go back to take a closer look, which of course, annoyed everyone standing behind me.

The row that had all of the other seats that started with 10 (10A, 10B, 10C, 10E, 10F) just simply did not have a 10D. There was a 9D in front of it, and an 11D behind it. Then while my fuzzy brain tried to figure out this new funky "airline" math, I realized that there were two seats labeled as 12D.

There was the real 12D, then there was the fake 12D, which was really 10D, which was supposed to be my seat.

People were still staring at me as I shuffled backwards down the aisle with my carry-on. I tried to make a joke, "Heh. See, there's no 10D . . . two 12Ds . . . "

More stares. And I think someone threw something at me. Possibly a non-electronic digital camera.

Whatever. I HAD NO SEAT.

I briefly considered running off of the plane because surely not having a seat on the plane was a really bad thing. I'm thinking something as tragic as perhaps I have found myself in an upcoming bizarro episode of LOST, and that this plane will surely crash but I will be the only one who doesn't survive . . . because I never really had a seat on the plane.

And someone was calling me from inside the plane. In a Scream mask, holding Jason's chainsaw, in the library, with the candlestick.

It was all very dramatic in my head. But since people were still staring I decided to take Fake 12D as my seat until two someones came along insisting they both had 12D, at which time we would fight to the death for one of the 12Ds, or at least until one of us fell asleep.

It was really, really, ridiculously early in the morning.

I made it home just fine.

C.T.