Reboot (Newnan, Georgia)

We sat motionless at the gate in JFK for 30 minutes after everyone had fully boarded before the stewardess came on the loud speaker and announced, “We would like to apologize for the delay tonight. I know all of you are anxious to get home on Christmas Eve.”

There was a collective moan about the cabin.

“But we have a small technical glitch,” and just with that statement everyone on the packed Jet Blue flight seemed to all hold their breath, “but not to worry. All we need to do is completely shut off the power to the plane for a couple of seconds. And this should reset all the systems so it will hopefully clear this glitch.” The stewardess laughed over the microphone. “Think of it like a reboot you would do with your computer.”

No one laughed with her.

“So give us a couple of minutes, and we will initiate the reboot.” And with that we watched down the aisle to the front of the plane and saw her replace the microphone back on the wall hook.

The big black guy sitting beside me fidgeted in his seat and said under his breath, “Come on let’s go.”

So we all waited.

I sat there and remarkably I had not slept the entire flight from Hong Kong to New York City. And more amazingly, I wasn’t really tired. My brain was working overtime. I was trying to feel out why I was here. Why had I just jumped and used my Frequent Flier miles to come home so fast?

Why was I going home?

I don’t know. Something deep in me told me to go home. I couldn’t explain it. I knew this was the time I should be home.

Sophia ridiculed me for going home. “Little boy going home to see his mommy! You going to get some milk?”

I didn’t respond back.

But sadly, I knew how my time would be – my parents would spend most of the time watching their new HD television from their recliners oozing in and out of sleep. And I would spend most of my time in the guest bedroom beside my old room – reconstructing websites, searching on the Internet, and chatting. And in-between, I would gorge on my mom’s home cooking.

It was a complete comatose escape.

But what was the purpose of it?

And just then the entire cabin went pitch black except for the emergency lights that suddenly illuminated. I thought to myself, wow, this is what its like during an emergency landing. It looked like a the old Lite Bright toys where you pushed colored pegs into black paper across a big light bulb. I felt like I was sitting in a Lite Brite configuration. Blue lights over the emergency door – just beside the big black guy sitting beside me. Red lights down the aisle. Orange lights on the ceiling.

The temperature in the cabin suddenly rose because of the collective body heat of all the passengers. But the power stayed off for a lot longer than a couple of minutes. It seemed to take forever. And we all sat there in the dark. I was doubting the process.

A passenger jet packed with passengers would gain its strength again by simply turning the power off? And that would allow us to be safely delivered to Atlanta without falling out of the sky after take-off?

A reboot.

Then I thought, “Maybe that’s why I came home. A reboot. A new compile. A wipe of my former self. A format of my old rules and a new rendering of who I am and where I am going.”

I played with my seat belt and unbuckled it and buckled it again to make some noise and work out my anxiousness in the dark of the plane.

“Or maybe it’s a reboot to go back to basics. Clean out all the things I was deluding myself with. Trying to forget my former programming,” I said to myself. Then I laughed outloud. The black guy noticed, looked sideways at me, and then dismissed it.

“God, I have been working too much. My inner thoughts to myself are even technical.”

And just then the lights to the cabin came on in a burst of energy.

Very soon after, the stewardess came back on the microphone and looked at all of us from the front, “Again, I wanted to thank you for flying JetBlue and I truly appreciate your patience. I would just like to inform you that the reboot worked. And we are underway for pull back from the gate.” She paused. “Unfortunately, all of this has resulted in an hour delay. But the pilot and co-pilot will do everything they can in flight to make up this lost time.”

People with their mobile phones in their hands started texting family and those more bold just called them to inform of the delay.

“We would like to thank you for flying JetBlue Airways.” She finished with and hung up the microphone.

Yes, a reboot, I told myself. That’s why I am going home.

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