Today

She passed out at her party.

This would be reasonably acceptable behavior, of course, for a college sophomore who had one Red-Bull-and-Vodka too many while celebrating her birthday. However, it's much less so for somebody who's turning 5 at Gymboree.

The Young Daughter's having "episodes," as we call them. They look kind of like seizures, but we're pretty sure they're not. The usual progression: Young Daughter is playing at full speed, then she starts to look kind of out of it, then she goes all pale, then she wants to go to sleep right there, wherever "right there" is. Then, usually, she throws up.

Mercifully, that last part didn't happen Sunday. But the rest of it did, right up to falling asleep on her mom's shoulder while 20 screaming kids ran around jumping on things and throwing balls and dancing and stuff.

It's hard, really, to pin down what she does during these "episodes." The simplest way to put it would be that she's just not herself. Pretty much all of the behavior related to these incidents is 180 degrees out of character for her.

The hospital trip to diagnose these things was scheduled last week, before yesterday's occurrence. She'll stay until they can figure out what it is. So far, they've set aside five days. That's a long damn time, when you're 5 years old.

--------

This forum is almost exactly one year younger than the Young Daughter. The first post is dated Oct. 21, 2001, two days before her first birthday. It was at a "well-baby checkup" two days later that we found out that she might be somewhat less than well.

Up until the last few months, the impact of what I used to somewhat lightly call the dread disease was pretty minimal. She had some spots on her skin. She had to go to elongated doctor's appointments every few months. She had to undergo MRIs under general anesthesia. Turns out one of those, back in 2003, almost killed her. In the course of trying to track the neurofibromatosis, we discovered that she also has a condition known as malignant hyperthermia, where general anesthesia causes her to run fevers well into triple digits.

Even after that scare, we slipped back into something resembling a routine. In the back of my mind, though, ever since I learned how to spell neurofibromatosis, I thought that 2005 was going to be a rough ride. The disease flares up in tandem with hormonal activity -- it usually starts to get really bad around puberty, but you also start seeing effects around age 4.

My original fear was that she'd regress developmentally. That hasn't seemed to happen, at least not in the cognitive sense. She ALSO has a hormonal deficiency which has put her in the single-digiteth percentile on height and weight for her age. She's not a dwarf; she looks like a perfectly proportioned 3-year-old.

After the brain tumors (which sounds a whole lot more direct than "optic gliomas") were discovered, things changed a bit. We needed to do more tracking, because if those tumors -- which are otherwise benign -- start to grow in her head, there's a chance they'll get in the way of stuff that actually needs the room more. So, more MRIs. More eye exams.

Then, the "episodes." Rare at first, then more frequent, then noticeable to even the casual observer.

-------

Normalcy, now, is not an option. The Wife and the Young Daughter will spend the next several days in the hospital while people who spent lots and lots and lots of money on their educations rub their chins and squint a lot and say, in Doctor Voice, "Well, we don't know what's going on." The treatment could be chemotherapy; 18 months of hell punctuated by the occasional really bad day. The treatment could be surgery, where somebody opens the hood on my kid's head and rearranges some wires, which might or might not fix the problem. The treatment could be, "Well, these things are going to happen every once in a while; they're not causing any permanent damage and they're not really a sign of anything; you just have to keep a close eye, keep her comfortable and accept this as your new "normal."

All of those choices pretty much suck.

Meanwhile, the palms of my hands are scorched from the friction caused by my attempt to stop the world from turning for a few days. Everything's on hold right now. It's all on hold. The other two kids have to have Halloween tonight; you can't begin to guess the depths of my lack of enthusiasm for taking them around the neighborhood begging for candy while everyone asks "Where's your other one?" or, for those who know, "How's your other one?"

The Wife spent almost 40 minutes this morning rattling off the list of responsibilities for which I need to be responsible over the course of the coming week, while she sits in the incredibly uncomfortable accommodations offered by our local children's hospital. Her job is damn hard, much harder than mine, and requires greater organizational skill than I posess (and my organizational skills, frankly, are quite good.)

And oh, yeah, I need to figure out a way to hold down my job, too, to pretend to care that somebody's database is down or that the software is behaving funny or that they really wish their problem would move to the front of my line. I've been doing a pretty good job of feigning interest for the last month. One major project was completed last week, and another is starting to build steam. Several minor projects also are calling for my attention. For today, anyway, they're just hearing it ring, or hearing "please leave a message after the tone and I'll get back to you after I find out whether they're going to drill holes in my daughter's head."

For today, anyway. At some point, I pull my hands back and let it all start spinning again.

---------

I have no desire for anyone's sympathy. Neither does The Wife, nor the Young Daughter. Yeah, it's a crappy way to spend the day, in the hospital, but sympathy isn't going to help anything. Many are in far, far, far worse situations than we are.

I do care that you care. I appreciate the well wishes and the kind thoughts and all the people who are interrupting their lives to help us while ours are being interrupted. I appreciate it more than my facility with the language will allow me to express.

It's time now to spin the globe. Gotta jump back on.

Where the path leads next

The Young Daughter has taken a turn. It hasn't been a good turn. A bunch of doctors tell us what they think it is. Nobody is willing to commit. Nobody is willing to offer a course of treatment.

The Young Daughter goes into the hospital on Monday, length of stay undetermined. The mission: Find out what it is that is going on, and get some answers.

The disease is neurofibromatosis type 1, for those of you just joining us. The Wife is recording events and news here. Just send up some good wishes. Right now, those help more than anything.

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

"I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die -- the dream of freedom and peace."

Others have gained more fame and fortune and notoriety during the struggle, but it all started that day in 1955, when that driver said, "I'm going to have you arrested," and she gently replied, "You may do that."

It had nothing to do with a seat on the bus, people. It had to do with teaching us how to be human beings, to treat each other with the respect all of us deserve -- and to stand up (or stay seated, in her case) for what is right.

The lesson hasn't been learned yet, but thanks to her, we're well on our way. Those of us born after 1964 will never know how much courage it took for her to say, "You may do that." We have Mrs. Parks to thank.

Baa

Last night in Tampa, 22,120 sheep flocked to the St. Pete Times Forum (why is the arena in Tampa named after the newspaper in St. Petersburg? Do you think the City of Dallas would have allowed the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to swoop in and do such a thing? But I digress) ... anyway, 22,120 sheep flocked to the big arena in downtown Tampa to welcome back the NHL and their Stanley Cup Champion Lightning.

This, of course, being the same NHL that decided NOT TO PLAY AT ALL LAST YEAR rather than figure out an equitable way to divide its multi-billions among its members.

And no fans of the Stanley Cup Champion Lightning are even the slightest bit angry about this? That it was Oct. 5, 2005, and they were hoisting a banner that read "2004 STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS"? Nobody thought it was the slightest bit ridiculous?

Sheep. Baa. This is why the professional sports moguls are the leading geniuses of the Western world. Nobody takes more money and gives back less. Wish I had thought of it first.

It must stop. Now.

She is just another one of more than 1,900 so far, just another dead soldier. She's the first woman from Palm Beach County to die in Iraq. She was 21. Born in 1984, the year I got my driver's license.

I should insert a political comment about how f---ing stupid war is in general and this war is specifically. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to send up a wish for peace for this woman and all those who believed in her, and leave it, because that's all I can do.

Random stray thought

If I'm going to work at home, I need a more comfortable chair.

Hey kid: Shut up

From a story in today's Cincinnati Enquirer exploring a phenomenon it calls "premature affluence":

What makes parents do it, experts say, are motives that range from sheer financial ability to "guilt giving" to make up for an absence of parental time or attention. And then there's simple convenience - a 16-year-old with his own car, for example, can haul younger siblings to soccer practice. Worse still, some parents give out of dread of what happens if they don't. "I've had parents tell me they're scared to come home from the store without a certain toy," said psychologist Buffone.

Scared? Scared?

A fellow parent once gave me his No. 1 Rule of Parenting, and we stick with it: "Never take shit from your kids."

Scared. Give me a break.

Thing is, if parents have already created this expectation in children old enough to cause that fear, they've already lost. It's too late to undo that.

And don't even get me started on the "guilt giving" thing.

Quick breather

Today, for the first time in several days, I didn't spend every waking moment thinking about, talking aobut, using, testing, and cursing at software. Here's what I did instead:

-- Slept like a baby on an Airbus A320, not worried for a second that the landing gear might go sideways ...
-- Went to a birthday party. The guest of honor was turning 5. About 30 of her friends were there to share the joy, including my three children. Talked football and airplanes with the guest of honor's dad, who is an Air Force pilot. On Nov. 11, he's leaving for Turkey for 15 months.
-- Hung out with the kids after coming home from the birthday party. We watched Shark Tale for the 23rd time. The animated Robert De Niro is pretty funny.
-- Played guitar and sang. Did neither very well, of course, but my audience of zero didn't care.
-- Monitored the Young Daughter after a CAT scan this afternoon. She had two seizure episodes earlier this week. Anxiously awaiting the results to determine what the next step is.
-- Standing watch at home tonight while The Wife takes a night off. God, she's earned it. She's been dealing with pretty much everything while I've been holding the hand of the software I'm installing. Everything, of course, ranging from dealing with normal life plus seizures plus bad news from the extended family.

It's been a long damn 168 hours for both of us. I plan to be unreachable for the next 12. Then it's time to get up and do it all again.

We can help

Their dog crapped in our yard. Usually, that's not a good way to get to know someone.

But my wife, of course, is a Dog Person. When the very apologetic woman with the black lab and the 7-year-old boy in tow stopped to apologize -- "I don't have a bag, I'm so sorry" -- The Wife assured her that it was OK, and that it certainly was not the first or last dog turd that would find a home in our yard.

I must point out that nobody gets out of our yard without getting to know The Wife. This is a woman who met one of her best friends in the checkout line at Kroger, and another in a random outing to the park three days after we moved to Florida the first time. When you and she cross paths, you will get to know her, and in minutes, you'll be giving her information you wouldn't just give any stranger. She's irresistable that way.

This stranger, with the kid and the dog, somehow let slip that she was visiting from New Orleans. Well, not "visiting," exactly. They got out of their East New Orleans neighborhood just before Hurricane Katrina dropped in with its 125-mph shredder.

She and 10 of her relatives are staying with relatives in our neighborhood. They don't know how long they'll be staying. They don't know if they have a home to go back to. They only know what they see on CNN, and what they see on CNN doesn't exactly make them optimistic.

The 10 range in age from 7 to 87. The black lab is one of four dogs who made the involuntary trip east on Interstate 10. They got out alive, but with only enough to get them through a few days. The "few days," of course, has turned into "indefinitely." And nothing is more indefinite than homelessness.

"Well, we'll help you," The Wife said. Understand, this was not, "oh, my gosh, you poor, poor people," or "oh my gosh, survivors in our midst!" or anything like that. Just a matter of fact: "Well, we'll help you."

And help she will. While I was in the air from Connecticut on the way home, she rallied a few of her friends in the neighborhood and made a plan.

The first thing, above all else, to take into consideration was the people's dignity. These are middle-class people, just like us, just like everyone around us, who are not used to taking handouts. They don't need a handout.

There are things they do need. Their hosts are going to see some pretty high utility bills with 10 extra people in the house. The dogs need food, and toys. The boys, ages 7 and 13, need something to stave off boredom -- and, more importantly, things to call their own, as they only carried with them what they could.

So: Her next step was to lead the coordination efforts, and to emphasize that this was not Goodwill. "I don't want them to wind up with a bunch of castoff stuff that these people will just have to move," she said. So she's serving as the neighborhood clearing house for material, making sure that each individual person's needs are filled -- from the 7-year-old's Hot Wheels to the matriarch's clip-on earrings.

Later that afternoon, she met the woman again in the park by the school. This time, the 87-year-old grandmother was with her, soaking up the sun in her wheelchair, looking little the worse for wear after two weeks of hell. The Wife shared her plans with the people, and quietly but firmly rebuffed their protestations. The old woman took my wife's hands. She looked her in the eye. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you, and bless you." She said a prayer.

"You're welcome," my wife said. But the old woman didn't let go.

"Bend down here, please," the old woman said. My wife leaned her 6-foot frame forward. The old woman made the sign of the Cross on my wife's forehead. She said a prayer in a foreign language; The Wife thinks it was Latin. The Wife, of course, is resolute. This is not sympathy she's providing; it's help. But it was hard for her to keep the tears in, and it was impossible for me as she related the story to me.

Later Friday evening, she held a meeting with the family to assess each person's specific needs.

Today, she's working with banks -- after hours -- to establish an account for them.

Tomorrow, after the logisitics get worked out, she and her two friends are going to canvass the neighborhood and get these people helped.

No sympathy. No pandering. Just help. It could be us next time.

This, folks, is what makes her The Best Woman in the World.

They're people, too

New Orleans Police Chief Eddie Compass is the latest Louisiana public official to lose it on TV. And the worst is yet to come for these people.

God help them. They have the most difficult jobs in America right now.

Hang on while I get the sand out of my hair

That would be appropriate, of course, only if Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff had hair. He was playing the "Uh, nobody saw this coming" defense in his presser this afternoon.

Mr. Chertoff, they saw it coming two years ago:

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/

And the National Weather Service put this in its normally dry, straight-to-the-point advisory on Sunday afternoon:

WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

Don't give me the "Nobody saw this coming" bullshit. Save it for the hearings.

Textbook example of failure

We're learning more lessons than a classroom full of first-graders. We still don't know the worst of the Gulf South tragedy, and already we're talking about "lessons learned." That learning comes too late for many, many people. But maybe we'll be better and smarter next time.

LESSON ONE: (blank), shelter and (blank)
Three basic human needs: food, shelter and clothing. We all learned that in first grade. One is not enough without the other two. If you're going to send all the people who can't get away to a large sports arena, make sure the damn thing is stocked with food and water. For good measure, park a couple of tankers outside to take over when the plumbing quits. In short: Do the same level of minimal planning that you'd do if you were planning to hold a football game or a boxing match or a Billy Graham Crusade, only over the course of several days.

LESSON TWO: Geography
You have a river flowing on one side. You have a lake on the other. You've built walls to keep a dry area between the two. A short drive away is an ocean; an ocean with waters that run 90-plus degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime, acting as fuel for tropical weather systems. Don't stand up there, Mr. FEMA, and tell me that "nobody thought about a hurricane and a flood at the same time." Hell, my wife and I thought about that Saturday night, and we're not exactly disaster planning experts. Maybe there'll be job openings for us at FEMA soon.

LESSON THREE: Sociology
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued the mandatory evacuation order on Saturday, and offered up the Superdome as a "shelter of last resort." The Wife, upon hearing of this Saturday night: "The roof's gonna peel off that thing like a tuna can." My reply: "Yep, and there's gonna be several thousand cranky, unhappy, hungry people in there."

In general, who won't heed a mandatory evacuation order?

1/The stubborn
2/The stupid
3/The poor and/or infirm
4/People who have issues regarding respect for authority

(And hey, put your deck of race cards away. Notice NO REFERENCE to race in any of the above. Millions and millions of white people - some of whom to which I am related - fit all four of the criteria.)

In the midst of a natural disaster, you're dealing with about 75,000 people who fit at least one of the above four categories. Under the best of circumstances, that's not going to be an orderly group of people.

A group of 75,000 people in a small area who are not scared, bored, hungry, tired, dehydrated, and defending the lives of themselves and their children is going to be hard to manage. Throw in any one of those mitigating circumstances -- never mind all of them -- and you might as well light up a Lucky Strike on a drilling rig. The fact that somebody thought it would be OK to toss them into the Superdome with no food, water or security is simply the height (depth?) of idiocy.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being stubborn, stupid, poor or infirm. But those people needed a leader, or perhaps several leaders, and those leaders needed to be leading from the minute those people hit the Superdome's concourses. Authorities under no circumstances should have treated them like animals, but they should have understood with whom they were dealing and planned and acted accordingly.

LESSON FOUR: Division of power
City government is responsible for the cities. County government (or, in Louisiana, parish government) is responsible for the parishes. State government is responsible for the states. Federal government is NOT responsible for filling in gaps caused by the incompetence of the other three. We can't talk out of one side of our mouths about wanting less federal government and then talk out of the other side asking where they were in our time of need. When the time comes to go back and assess the failure in New Orleans, that assessment starts at City Hall, works its way to the parish government offices and then heads northwest to Baton Rouge, and stops there.

Should Washington have stepped in sooner to cover for that failure, which became obvious Monday afternoon? Perhaps. But that then calls into question the need for local and state governments at all. Should Washington have come through with the money to finish the levee project? Perhaps, but once it didn't, it was time for the state to step in and adjust its budget.

We've seen something awful. This is the worst disaster in American history since the Civil War. In terms of death toll, it's going to make September 11 look like a bad car accident. In terms of sustained human suffering, it's going to rival and perhaps eclipse the Great Depression. Nobody has addressed for even a second a question of what all these people holed up in the Astrodome and Alamodome and Reunion Arena and other assorted large sporting facilities around the South are going to do in two weeks.

It's time to find out if the United States has any social conscience at all. Pray for us.

Sad wordplay

New Orleans' airport code is MSY. All I can think when I see that is "misery."

A tip for the New Orleans Police Department

... and for law enforcement throughout the Gulf South:

See a looter, shoot on sight, shoot to kill.

This should be pretty simple.

Shoot to kill. Or, if you don't want that on your conscience, shoot to hurt, and let whatever's in the floodwaters do the rest.

Fuckwads.

Watch out, NOLA, and stay safe

Back on Thursday, I was leading system training a group of newsroom users up in Illinois. We were having a good time using the new editorial and page-building system to make fake pages, trying to wind "Katrina," "Waves" and "Sunshine State" into one headline. ... and don't it feel GOOD! (There, now the song is stuck in your head, too.)

Now, it doesn't seem so funny.

In 1998, I was a graphic artist at the Medium-Sized Newspaper in Florida. Hurricane Georges was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and as the only member of the Sunday night staff, I was assigned to assemble a graphic on what would happen to New Orleans if the Big One ever came across Lake Pontchartrain. The scenario I drew was basically really, really awful; levees breached, pumps overwhelmed, devastating damage and loss of life in one of America's great cities. I called the newsroom of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans to verify a couple of facts I had found in my research. "Hang on," the very nice young editor on the other end of the phone said, "we just lost power again." I apologized for taking her away from her work on what was certainly a very busy evening. "That's OK," she said. "We can't really do anything anyway. We're just waiting."

Georges veered off and took down a couple of Motel 6s in Mississippi. New Orleans was spared that time.

I found myself walking around in the French Quarter a year later, taking a break as I drove from Florida to Texas to take the job at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. I went down to where the river starts to meet the Gulf, and looked at the system of levees and dikes and pumps that I had drawn, sight unseen except for photographs. And I thought, Yeah, if that storm had hit, that would have been really bad. I can't say I fell in love with the city; even on a Saturday afternoon, the smell of debauchery hung in the air. And that's not a pretty smell. I ran into a lot of people from the fringes of society as I walked around and looked at the great architecture and the restaurants and the nightclub with the sign that read, "Come in and see if YOU can guess what gender they are!" But as a party town, I could certainly see the appeal.

I hope all the doomsayers are wrong on this one, but it doesn't look very good for the City of New Orleans. My thoughts are especially with all those people at the Times-Picayune building with their families and sleeping bags and snack foods, wondering what hell they're about to witness and then have to write about and photograph. I won't be calling this time, but if I was, I'd be sending prayers and best wishes.

Why bother?

I had a bad day at work today; the kind of bad day that makes you want to re-think your entire existence, your career, your way of life. Basically, I'm creating failure, and I'm surrounded by failure. Without going into specifics, I can guarantee we have no happy customers today, and no happy employees.

Bad days always end, however, and they often end at home. There I have three kids and wife who I love more than anything int he world and who, on most days, think I'm OK.

Bad days never really end, however, because at the end of a bad day, there's the wallowing and the what-if and the what-now, all the kinds of things you think at the end of a bad day.

We all talked about our days at the kitchen table. My entry: "My day was bad." The Young Daughter, 4, starts singing, "Bad day, bad day, go away, my day was BAD!" Flourish, big smile, mouth open wide enough to land a 757. That's her way of saying she cares.

I tucked the Young Daughter in tonight. I sighed deeply. The Young Daughter said, in reply, "What?" I said, "I had a long day."

She replied, "Yeah, I had a long day too in the hospital."

--------

Normally I'd mark that down as a perspective builder. But hers is one more situation about which I can do nothing. Meanwhile, I have a Vice President of Sales, an office fulll of co-workers and 12 customers who don't give a flying fuck that my kid has a tumor in her head, even if they knew, which they don't.

I have to deal with all that, too. The one and only thing I can do for the Young Daughter and the rest of the house is to generate income and maintain a vaild health insurance policy. Walking out in a huff is not going to be the answer, no matter what.

----

But I'm at my end. I just can't do anything to fix anything. Working harder isn't the answer; in 12 hours of work today, which started with a phone call to Europe at 5:30 a.m. my time, I accomplished about an hour's worth of actual accomplishment. This time last year, I was the new guy who didn't know what I was doing. This time this year, I have the word "Senior" in my title; I don't know a lot more about what I'm doing, but I'm expected to impart that knowledge to the three new people we just hired, boom-boom-boom, as well as manage the four projects I have to manage, as well as trying to write documentation.

Meanwhile, The Wife spent a good chunk of today on the phone with doctors. The Young Daughter has a team of specialists doing battle against the dread disease. They're all very good doctors, individually. Until today, they had been concentrating on their own little areas, in isolation. The Wife finally demanded today that ONE of them take charge of the situation. ONE of them has to know a little bit about everything. As I put it, "Somebody needs to be the project manager." I think she made some progress. She's taken charge of the situation the best way she knows how, which is to say, she has taken charge of the situation, grabbed the situation by the neck and is leading it in the right direction. She's not a neurologist. She's more important. She's a mom. My admiration for her keeps growing by the minute, even as I know she's nearing the end of her rope, too.

So what it comes down to is this: My problems mean really nothing. My bad day means really nothing. Which, at this very moment, just makes me ask the question above.

Barrier to the abyss

I'm back from Canada. I still have $50 Canadian in my pocket ($41 US, roughly) and a few more words in my French vocabulary. Montreal was wonderful; saw Andy Roddick get eliminated in the first round of a U.S. Open tuneup, heard lots of French, saw lots of fantastic architecture. I'll be back in mid-September. The chill of fall will likely already be in the air.

Returned Friday for an appointment with my daughter's pediatric neuro-oncologist. The fact that my daughter even has a pediatric neuro-oncologist is bad enough. We were making prepartions for the Young Daughter to begin chemotherapy to combat these tumors in her head. Made the appointment for the surgery, read the literature, began getting ourselves mentally prepared.

Then: Well, not yet. No growth in the tumor. No chemo yet.

This is good news. Sort of. The tumors are still there. She'll have to do it eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But not yet.

This is good. And bad. We wait.

Reward

After a really bad travel day, after which I said for the 10th time, "I'm never flying US Airways again," knowing full well that I will, I wound up here. It doesn't suck.

First day of school

The Old Daughter came home from her first day of middle school today. She announced that she was no longer going by her first name and wanted to go by her middle name.

Her first name is pretty cool. Her middle name is a family name, not one that most 11-year-old girls would want to carry.

Why? "I wanted a change."

Well, you don't change stuff on the first day of middle school, not when you're riding a bus for the first time and not when we might need to find you by the name we know. She was taken aback by that, and reacted accordingly, and somewhat emotionally. Well, that was not the way we wanted to start middle school.

We compromised: Academically, she must be known by her first name, or if she wants to use all three of her names, fine. Her friends can call her anything she wants.

I wonder if we handled that the right way. Thoughts?

A simple "thank you" would have sufficed

By all accounts, the crew of Air France 538 deserves to be lauded for its quick response after Tuesday's crash in Toronto -- which happened less than an hour before I took off for Detroit. The crew emptied an Airbus A340 in 90 seconds. An Airbus A340 is a big damn plane. Two aisles, 2-4-2 seating in the main cabin. A total of 309 people survived the crash, breakup of the plane and subsequent explosion.

As usual, however, you can't please everyone, even if you save his or her life. From msnbc.com:

Gwen Dunlop, a Toronto resident who was on the flight returning from vacation in France, said when the plane first touched down the passengers believed they had landed safely and clapped with relief.

"Only seconds later, it started really moving and obviously it wasn't OK," said Dunlop. "At some point the wing was off. The oxygen masks never came down; the plane was filling up with smoke."

"One of the hostesses said, 'You can calm down, it?s OK,' and yet the plane was on fire and smoke was pouring in," Dunlop told The AP. "I don't like to criticize, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared."

Ungrateful bitch. Shut up and be happy you remember how "unprepared" they seemed.