A Tilt-A-Whirl Day - JT's Tales From the Trail

Jill Thomas is a rambler, traveler, and storyteller with a big laugh who thinks its funny how life leads you right where you need to be, however the roundabout path.

Do you have a day that stands out among all the thousands you've lived that was especially oddball? 

I do. It happened when I was barely an adult, and still, through all my crazy adventures, no day has ever topped it.

The day started like most others: I got up, dressed, drank coffee, and rode the streetcar to my first grown-up job. I was a research assistant for a television production company on a Canadian reality TV show called Missing Treasures: The Search for Our Lost Children. 

I was 22, and my job was to interview parents whose children were missing for whatever horrible reason. It was a crazy job, but that's a different story.

Everyone was in a flap when I arrived at work. A field producer forgot to get a mom to sign a release form after an in-person interview. This particular mom lived in Brooklyn and lost her son ten years prior at a carnival on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. He got on a Twist-a-Whirl ride and never got off again.

The production was ready to go - actors, cameras, a rented theme park but could not start shooting without this release form. Ahh the days before digital signatures! Every hour delay costs $20,000. 

I was busy minding my business at my desk when the Executive Producer walked up and said, "you're going to New York." He passed me an envelope with a blank release form, a Brooklyn address, $500 in cash, and a plane ticket. He told me my return flight was at 7 pm and he would fire me if I missed that flight or came back without a signature. I had never been to New York City. 

When I exited La Guardia, I gave the driver the address and experienced my first NYC rip-off. He drove me around for an hour and a half, and when I questioned him, he responded, "do you want me to let you out here?" Looking out the window, my answer was a hard no.

Finally, we arrived at a massive, worn-out apartment building on a dodgy-looking street in Brooklyn. I rang the buzzer and went up. I was scared shitless and kept telling myself get in, get the signature, get out. The mom spotted my weakness and decided she wanted a day out.

She tells me she wants a ride to Manhattan, and then she will sign the form, so we hop in the cab at my expense. Then she says she wants to eat at Planet Hollywood before she signs the form, so we do that. Then she wants dessert, and now it is almost 6 pm, and I am freaking out that I will miss my plane and not have enough money to return to the airport. I have $100 left after I pay the bill.

So I do what many 21-year-olds in my predicament might do. I cry. The mom from hell takes pity, signs the freaking form, and flags me a cab. It takes 15 minutes to get a taxi because none of the cabbies want to go to the airport. I'm still sniffling when I get in the cab. It took that cabbie 30 minutes to get to the airport, and he charged me $75. I was the last person to board the plane. 

You think this is the end. Wrong. 

The plane flew through a storm. It turned fully sideways on one side, then the other. I could see lightning out the windows. I was holding hands with the stranger beside me. People were weeping and screaming. 

I exited the Toronto airport, ready to rid myself of the form and go home to bed, but instead, I was told by the production assistant that picked me up that I was needed on set because they were short of extras. I was promptly whisked off to a rented fake carnival and assigned to be an extra on the Tilt-A-Whirl. They kept screwing up the the shot, and I rode that ride for three hours. 

I was finally released at 2 am. My hippie, busker, boyfriend had driven up and awaited me. It was the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend, and we promised to be at his parent's house in Ottawa the next day. So we drove 6 hours directly from the carnival, in sub-zero weather, in a VW van with only a Canadian Tire space heater plugged into the cigarette lighter. 

As the sun rose over the Ottawa Valley, he lamented that I couldn't sing because I was tone-deaf. It turned out later that this was a deal-breaker for our relationship.

No part of this story is exaggerated or made up. I suspect I will never top it. 

I'd love hear about your most oddball rambles in the comments!

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