A few days ago, my mom decided to have a party to welcome some of her previous tutors from China who had come to live in our house for a day. Of course, this meant a lot of cleaning to do. My mom decided to stay home and cook for them while my dad picked them up from the airport.

So of course when my mom got a phone call from them saying they had landed in San Antonio (a city near Houston, where we lived), it was most certainly a surprise.

Her first thought was that the airplane had terrorists on it and they had made it land in San Antonio.

Her second thought was that her first thought couldn’t be possible, because the airplane would have probably blown up or would be stuck in a building. She breathed with relief.

Her third thought was that they had to find a way to get her mentors from the airport to Houston.

Her fourth thought was that my dad was driving circles in the airport’s “No Parking Zone”.

Then she thought of telling him about the situation. She phoned my dad and told him to come back home because the airplane had landed in San Antonio. He should come home and book them a bus or something, she said.

But why? My dad decided to do just a bit of investigating before he drove the hour drive home. He stepped up to the airline desk and asked them what had happened to the flight.

It turned out they had landed because of the large cloud above Houston, and the storm warning in effect. They were scheduled to take off once again in a while after the storm had cleared.

My dad now faced an important question. Leave, or wait?

He decided he could think better with a sandwich, and therefore bought one from the food court.

And then he got a call from my mom. The airplane had taken off.

San Antonio is around twenty minutes from Houston by airplane. My dad hadn’t finished his sandwich before they came walking out of the terminal.

Because they didn’t know a bit of English (they were both Chinese magazine editors), it was a good thing they weren’t kicked out of the airplane, or else they would have quite a bit of problem getting on a bus.

Because we were somehow always lucky and personally, I and my family have never had something happen like that. But now we know that weather makes a big difference. The only thing is that airlines don’t cover weather, so if there was weather and the airplane was redirected… bad luck for you.

I hope I’m never the “you” in that sentence…