The passport miracle

The flight was supposed to take off around 11 pm. As usual, I waited until the day of to pack. I finished packing around 3:00 pm and just needed to grab my passport, but when I opened my backpack — it wasn’t there…

My friend Diante and I were flying to Paris. We had been watching flights for a few months and saw it was cheaper to fly from New York than Detroit. We went to school in Michigan so Detroit was closer, but I’m from Jersey so it made sense to catch the cheaper flight from JFK.

I was positive I had packed my whole apartment into my van. I was moving out. So when I couldn’t find my passport I called my friend Taylor to ask if he could go check my apartment and make sure it wasn’t there.

Tay calls me back 30 minutes later — ”Got your passport right here bro, don’t worry I’ll just overnight it and you should be good”.

“Bro…. my flight is in a few hours”.

“Ohhhhhh shit, don’t even worry bro I’ll call fedex and see what they can do.”

Tay calls FedEx and I call my Mom. My Mom’s saying everything I don’t want to hear. “Cancel the flight”. “Book a new one”. “There’s no way to get the passport in time”. I told her I’d call her back if I thought of something.

Tay calls me back a few minutes later. ”Nothing they can do bro, sorry. Let me know what you want me to do, I can overnight it to you so you have it if you book a new flight”.

It was a little after 4 at this point and as soon as I got off the phone it hit me — there must be flights going from Detroit to JFK. Sure enough there were 2 delta flights, one at 6 pm landing at 8 and one at 8 landing at 10. So I call Delta to see if there’s anything they can do. They have me on hold for an hour, just to tell me they wished they could help, but there was nothing they could do.

So I call Tay back and told him I needed him to go to the airport. At this point he’s at the gym playing ball. I was lucky he was even by his phone. “The airport???”.

“Yeah bro, they said they couldn’t do anything for me when I called them, but I know they could figure something out in person.”

My idea was Tay could pass my passport off to someone flying to JFK and I could scoop it from arrivals. Tay is real as fuck so he said he’d head over. At that point I called my mom and told her the plan and she told me it was illegal to just give a random person my passport to fly with. I looked it up, illegal for sure.

So I call Tay back and he said he’d see if the attendants could do anything. By the time Tay got to the airport it was already around 5:20. He talked to the clerks and they told him there was nothing they could do. BUT they did say Delta Cargo might be able to help. As Tay was in line there, I probably called him 3 times. I NEEDED this to work.

When Tay finally talked to the attendant, he went to WORK. He threw in just enough embellished details for them to agree to throw the passport in the cargo hold of the flight. But the doors to the 6:00 had just closed so the passport had to go on the 8:00 pm — landing at 10. And I had to be on the plane by the time they closed the doors around 10:50.

So with the passport en route, I headed to the airport. I went up to the first guy I saw with a Norweigan shirt and ran the whole situation down. “Nah todays my first day, go talk to that guy”.

This other guy tells me, “You get back here with that passport by 10:30 and you on the flight B, IIIIIIII got you”.

We dropped Diante off and my dad drove me to the Delta Cargo Facility. I went in and gave the guy at the desk my confirmation number and asked what time it should land — ”10:05”. Barely even looked up from his desk. Then the woman next to him looked up and as I made eye contact with her.

“Damn, my passports on that flight”. Both of them bolted up and the guy at the desk is like, “YOUR PASSPORT? Where you going??” I told him Paris and gave him the breakdown. He got up to go talk to his manager.

He comes back and tells me that his manager agreed to send another person to the plane whose only job was to grab my passport and rush it back. I thanked him and went back out to the car. My Dad started saying how great of a lesson this was gonna be. “Not everything in life works out”. “It’s just money”. Blah, blah, blah.

“I’m not tryna hear all that! If you don’t think this will work PLEASE be quiet”.

A little after that the guy from the desk came outside and told me his shift was over, but he told the next guy what was going on and his manager was still there. He ended up going back inside anyway because he wanted to see if it worked out.

I went back inside around 9:45 and started pacing around the room. 10:05, the guy at the desk told me the plane landed. At this point, everyone there was trying to see what was gonna happen. A few of them got on the walkie talkie and asked the guy they sent to the plane what his eta was. Radio silence. After 10 minutes everyone was amped, cursing into the radio and everything. Still silent. My stomach started doing gymnastics.

The whole day, it never even crossed my mind that I might not get on this flight. But there I was looking at some slim chances.

10:30–the guy comes in with the passport and hands it to me. Just as I was about to book it to the car, the guy at the desk said I needed to sign for it. As soon as I wrote a C on the paper he snatched it and yelled go. I Usain bolted to the car and my dad took off.

My dad was beside himself. “I don’t know how you pulled this off. This is ridiculous.”

I was happy as hell. I was gonna make it. I ran into the airport and they already had my boarding pass printed off. I showed them my passport and they escorted me through the security line and I ran to the gate. Of course it was the last gate.

I had told Diante not to get on the plane until he HAD TO. Until it was the ‘last call last call’ and he had to go into the tunnel. It was that time. I could hear the intercom calling my name as I was running through the airport and I could see Diante turn into the tunnel. I handed over my boarding pass, got through, then ran in the tunnel screaming. “LETTTTTTTSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOO”.

I called Tay and he was just as hype. People were staring at me at this point and I was really screaming, walking into the plane. As I sat down, the people around me started asking what happened and why I was so excited.

“Mannnnn, Let me tell you”.