Lost and Confused

Every year, there is a disaster drill at San Francisco Airport. As a member of San Mateo County’s C.E.R.T. team, I like to participate. Last year’s drill was fun. It was an air piracy exercise. I got to be passenger on a highjacked plane. The plane was stormed by S.W.A.T. guys, the highjacker arrested and the injured (including me) were taken away.

This year’s exercise was an earthquake preparedness drill. I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to be at the airport by 6:00 a.m. I did not bring my camera because the batteries are still dead after Big Sur. When you arrive, you are given a role to play. When I first read mine, I thought there was a typo. The envelope indicated my character was female, but when I opened it, it told me I had a wife. At first I thought there was a mistake, but then I realized they were being progressive. Very well, then. I was Russian, only in the US for two weeks, I spoke no English and my name was Ruth.

That’s it??? No other information? I can’t work with this! Oh, wait. This is the creative part. I began building my character. I was married, therefore I needed a ring. I transferred the ring on my right hand to my left. Then I remembered that some Russians, like many Europeans, wear their wedding rings on their right hands. Switch again.

Now, for the language problem. I only know two Russian words: da for “yes”, and govno, which I think means “shit”. I couldn’t get very far with those. I figured that Ruth would probably know enough English to tell people she can’t speak English, so there was one phrase. For the accent, I remembered the voice of the only Russian I know: the woman who answers the phone at my doctor’s office. Since my character is “emotionally overwrought”, there might be crying involved. I would pantomime everything else.

Since nobody told me the name of my wife, I made one up. I created Nadia, my beautiful blonde Russian wife. (Never mind that Russia does not acknowledge same-sex unions.) I was at the airport to pick her up when the earthquake hit. My role called for me to wander about, lost and confused. Not much of a stretch for me, since I do that most of the time, anyway. In fact, I had gotten an early start on this when I parked in the wrong garage and took the air train in the wrong direction. I like to think my lack of sleep had something to do with this.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t injured in the quake. No cool fake blood or protruding intestines for me. I had to wait for those lucky enough to sustain major traumatic injuries to be made up.

After quite a lot of sitting, we were broken up into groups and moved to different areas of the airport. We had been told not to run screaming through the airport, as that might alarm the real passengers going about their real world business. I wonder what they thought of us walking through the international terminal like a parade of the damned. Nothing to see, here. Nothing at all. Move along.

My group was placed at the “Reflection Room” which is as close as the airport gets to a non-denominational chapel without calling it a non-denominational chapel. It is a “place for reflection”. We were told to wait; someone would tell us when the exercise began. It was around this time that I got the first whiff of wrongness. I couldn’t put my finger on it. There seemed to be a lot of…nothing going on. Even some of the people in charge of exercise were walking around lost and confused. Hey!  That’s my part! These people are trying to steal my scene! Goddamn hacks. Get my agent on the phone!

It turned out that no one had a clue as to when the exercise actually started. We were supposed to wait for medical personnel to arrive, but we were way early. they kept us sitting around for about half an hour. During this time, a plane came in, and the passengers came flooding through the revolving door and saw us lying around covered with fake blood and gore. How reassuring for them.

Finally, some medical-type people show up. Time to start ACTING. I started crying. Seriously. I whipped up some tears and wandered around wailing my distress. I was so convincing that the paramedic examining me elevated me from a green tag (no injuries) to a yellow tag (requires attention). Then, the Red Cross volunteer who was there to monitor my mental health, took me into the Reflection Room and told me to wait. After making sure I understood what he wanted, he left. I was now trapped in the room with a dozen or so Aragon High School students. (Hey, mental health guy!)

I looked around between sobs. People didn’t seem to be in character anymore. Could I drop out? I had some Oreo cookies and some water and found a chair. Soon, a bunch of students started talking about the VMA Awards and Kanye West and new movies coming out and I knew they weren’t acting anymore. Even the ones sitting there with blood all over them were chatting away about The Vampire Diaries as if nothing was wrong.

Soon, I was beginning to get bored. It was obvious to me that no one really knew what was going on. I took out my iPod (yes, it really does go everywhere with me) and put on some music. You really can watch music videos on that tiny little screen. This was much different than last year’s exercise, which was so well planned and carried out. I had a thought: what if I were to excuse myself, go to the bathroom and just leave? My presence didn’t seem necessary anymore. I would miss out on the free lunch, but I would also not be bored anymore.

Soon, the time came. Like Steve McQueen on his motorcycle, I made my break for the lavatory. They would never miss me. Like all true thespians, I found it hard to let go of my character. I continued to wander around the airport lost and confused because I had neglected to mark down where I had parked my car. I remembered it was near the elevator and I had to take the train to get there. (This was, again, due to my lack of sleep.) Level 2, section A? There are a lot of garages at SFO. This could take all day.

My foggy memory finally kicked in and I found my car. But, in order to get it out, I had to pay $30. $30!!! (Turns out they had forgotten to mention that the Fastrak lane scans for Fastrak transponders and they are very sensitive. Sometimes they pick up a Fastrak even if you’re not in the Fastrak lane. They are reimbursing me.)

And so ended another disaster training exercise. The next time disaster strikes, I’ll be in my trailer.