Unflappable The Hero

There are some pretty amazing people out there. They do wonderful, impressive things that I couldn't learn to do if I dedicated my life to it. I speak not merely of heroes rescuing the fallen from burning buildings or laying their lives on the line for us in battlefields. I speak also of those engaged in more mundane (but certainly essential) pursuits. Consider the night shift airport desk clerk. His is an experience of mind-numbing boredom when it is not one of nightmarish and bizarre crisis. I have seen him in action now, and it is quite a thing.

As I was saying yesterday, it was a frightful thing reaching the comped hotel from the airport. I had been fortunate enough to be a lone traveler and claim the single seat remaining on the first bus over the group which preferred to wait and go over together. Others opted for taxis out of impatience, and their mistake became clear soon enough. I and my fellow passengers aboard the free shuttle chatted politely with the driver and made ready mentally to sleep at the earliest opportunity. I, having opted for the second flight out in the morning, was to have just five and a half hours to sleep before waking for a shower and the hotel's breakfast.

We were waiting in line to check in when it happened. An aggrieved man who had been with us waiting for the shuttle came in urgently, seeking from the clerk (out of turn, I might add) information on how one ought to deal with an unscrupulous taxi. He was advised that the taxi commission might offer relief if contacted. Moments later, the man's distraught wife and their erstwhile driver appeared. This driver was positively livid. Two conflicting stories developed. The man and his wife contested the driver's fare of twenty five dollars, contending that he had somehow deliberately drawn out the ride by taking them all the way down the Strip instead of straight to the airport (it may be so that he believed they were headed for the Hampton which was there).

The driver, for his part, offered no specific defense of that account that I heard, but nonetheless vehemently protested it in general. I feared earnestly that this exceptionally loud and hostile confrontation might well develop into blows, and honestly do not know that it didn't, though before I finished checking in and went upstairs (as quickly as I could) it did appear as if the driver had resigned himself to accepting a mere fifteen dollars in order to rid himself of the trouble.

Finally I come to that desk clerk. Never did his tone of voice vary. Never did his face betray a moment of stress or worry or fear. In a moment filled with a crushing crowd and a quite disorderly back-and-forth, he stood resolute like a warrior on the field of battle, continuing to process check-ins. He may have been a bespectacled young man of unremarkable build and lowly station, but he acted the part of a dedicated bomb squad leader, sure of himself and unshaken by whatever might come his way. I was quite impressed.