5
Our First Night
By: Sam Brooks
When we got off the plane I needed to use the rest room. And I wasn't in the minority with that. So we spent 20 minutes waiting in line for the toilet. Finally, we began to amble up into the main terminal where my dad bought something for his iphone and then we crossed to a restaurant selling diner. To us, it felt like 7:00pm but the local time was 1:00am so we were not completely surrounded by other people and the line went fast at the stand. We got a chocolate cake and 3 sandwiches to split and then we went down to baggage claim. We stood in line for ever before one of our 15 bags and boxes came out on the conveyor belt. In the end, we got four or five bags but the others were still stuck in New York so we couldn't camp because we didn't have a tent. So we looked for a hotel. We went through customs and immigration and then waited for the gut from the hotel. But he didn't have room.
I have slept at an airport once in my life and it is not a fun thing to do. I most certainly did not want to do it again. But, you can't have everything in life. We bought some toiletries and laid out a pad and a sleeping bag. Mom had us brush our teeth in the public bathroom and then lay half on half off the “bed”. All of the kids slept together and the parents slept on the floor next to us. At about 3 in the morning, this obnoxious guy came over and started yelling at us to get up and leave. There were signs that said “Don't sleep in airport” but tons of people were doing it so we didn't pay any attention to them. But this guy was talking to my mom and my mom didn't like it. He wanted us to get up and move. When my mom refused, he went to go nudge me with his foot to get me to wake up and my mom stopped him. Then he went crazy and started telling my mom to “behave” and then dad came over. They got into a big argument. Eventually, we left and sat bedraggled at a cafeteria nearby. That was a night I will not soon forget!