Suck it, American.

American Airlines played a cruel April Fool's Day joke on me.

I was supposed to be flying out of the O.C. for San Jo at 1:30 this afternoon. My dad dropped me off at John Wayne at 11:30 - 2 hours early for a 1-hour flight, which only a retired army colonel can rationalize - only to see "2:35 PM" printed as the departure time at the top of my boarding pass. But I had some knitting and some postmodernism to keep me busy for the next 3 hours...

That is, until one passenger noticed that one of the monitors listing the day's flights said that ours was cancelled. Some of the signs listed our original 1:30 departure time and others listed 2:35. Of course, there wasn't an airline employee at the gate to tell us what the hell was going on, and one woman ended up going all the way back to the ticketing/check in desk and through security again to find out whether we'd be stuck in Santa Ana forever. An airport employee eventually confirmed that, yes, our flight had indeed been cancelled.

I'm not gonna lie, I kind of wanted to cry. But I held back.

All of us passengers waiting at the gate trudged back to baggage claim, where our luggage had been abandoned, got back in line, and silently prayed for the ceiling to collapse and end our misery.

Just in case you're not visualizing this scenario properly, here's how it went down. There are just TWO employees working the AA desk (about 8 check-in kiosks). The line is already snaked around on itself and starting to block passersby. Then an army of 100 or so irate travelers descend on the desk and are corraled into a new line. An airport employee who has just as little information about what the fuck is happening goes around and tells everyone to call an 800 number for the airline. So now everyone in line is calling the same AA office, trying to get on the few remaining flights to San Jose, which are full to begin with. Meanwhile, no one from American has the balls to tell us anything themselves, and information is just spread via gossip down the line.

So I'm heading back north at 10:45 tomorrow morning. That was the earliest flight I could get on that's going to either SJ or San Francisco. I have to put up with the Hummers and soccer moms and the sunshine (it burns!) of Orange County for nearly 24 hours more. I've never missed Santa Cruz so much.