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SLAINTE, AER LINGUS! - Bonus Blog 1/18/2010 9:15:05 AM
BONUS BLOG – SLAINTE, AER LINGUS
How many people do you know who brush their teeth in the shower? Probably not many—and who would confide such information even if they did?
Truth is, I do and have for many years.
Brushing one’s teeth in the shower has many benefits, and some of them may even be orally therapeutic, such as using water that is not necessarily “spigot cold.” (It’s a known scientific fact that tepid, even warm water is better for your gums and your teeth’s enamel. I have it on good authority: my son-in-law is in his third year at dental school in Memphis!) Also, most toothpastes work more efficiently in mildly heated water.
Here’s what happens: each morning first thing upon entering the bathroom I turn on the shower; in our house, it takes four, five minutes for the water temperature to become bearable. By the time I slip the towel away from its hanger, adjust the floor mat comfortably outside the shower door, grab the electric toothbrush from its charger, and retrieve the tube of AIM from the vanity drawer where it sleeps, I step into the shower enclosure just as the water goes from winter ice storm to early spring rain.
Even so, I am not yet ready to go with the flow. Standing off to one side, I “wet” the bristles in the deluge and apply a large dollop of toothpaste from the tube. For the next 150 seconds I let the appliance do its thing.
During this procedure I do not listen to my Splash-O-Matic radio suspended from the showerhead mount (I could not hear it over the gush of water and buzzing of the brush, anyway.) When the cleansing instrument vibrates intermittantly, signaling my teeth are thoroughly scrubbed, I turn it off and reach up to the radio’s on/off/volume switch and, stepping fully under the precisely heated water, get my first dose of the day’s news, weather and traffic.
This day the radio talk show host with the unlikely name of Neal Boortz was telling about his assistant Belinda Skelton’s recent ski trip to snow-bound Salt Lake City, Utah (hardly a topic I relished while soaking in a shower.)
It seemed she had flown via Delta Airlines non-stop from ATL to SLC and upon arrival discovered that her family’s entire luggage had somehow managed to go elsewhere. Clothes, cosmetics, hats, goggles, gloves, mackinaws, boot liners, et al—everything but skiis and poles were now in that Great Limbo where airlines hide luggage that for some reason does not arrive with its owner.
“I paid Delta Airlines twenty dollars per suitcase,” she explained, an occasional sob breaking in her voice “and there were five of them. A hundred dollars worth of excess fees!”
Boortz asked what she did next.
“I told Delta I wanted a refund!”
“What did they say?” Boortz demanded.
“No way—they don’t give refunds. But they agreed to help me out. They gave me a t-shirt and a toothbrush.”
At this point I dropped my soap and in picking it up, nearly fell down (at my age this could have been catastrophic.) My mind’s eye flew back to a time many years ago when I often escaped to Ireland with travel industry associates, and one time we were booked into County Kildaire’s Kilkea Castle for a weekend of abandonment. I remembered arriving on a Friday morning, but my mammoth Pullman suitcase did not. I called Aer Lingus to file a complaint, and they assured me the bag had definitely arrived.
“All da rea-chords shew da valeese cum on da plane wit cha, an when ye dinna pic kit up adda terminal, we send hit over ta ye onna boose!”
For three days I begged, borrowed and stole articles of clothing and sundry toiletries from my traveling companions, and it was not until Sunday night (the evening before the day of departure) that I was introduced to another hotel guest.
“This is Roberta Miller,” I was told, “from Castleberry, England—she’s Leroy’s friend. Miss Miller, this is Robert Mills . . .”
“Good heavens!” cried Miss Miller. “I have a big blue suitcase in my room . . . !”
“Does it have,” I asked, toying with the swizzle stick protruding from my Paddy’s and white, “a nametag on it for an ‘R.A. Mills’?”
“Indeed it does! I was thinking of calling the concierge . . . ”
“But,” sighed I, “you never got around to it.”
Miss Miller shrugged. “You know how it is . . . ”
Staring at the soap in my hand, I wondered where Roberta Miller was today and if Belinda Skelton was even born back then. Probably not. But it didn’t matter. Aer Lingus, to my knowledge, never charged a fee for checked luggage.
