One Second

So I was watching one of Amazing Phil's videos called 'One Second' where he talks about life altering decisions that he has had to make in a split second, decisions that could of changed his life forever.

It made me remember one such 'split second' experience I once had...

I was at a very tender age of about 8 years old at the time, and my family had just been in England for my aunt's wedding and much to my dismay we actually had to leave. As I go back to St. Lucia, I was of course extremely upset, I have this vivid memory of me clutching into my grandparents couch on the eve of our departure and screaming "NO!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!! I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK TO ST. LUCIA!!!" as my parents tried to detach my body from the sofa.


However despite my greatest efforts my family and I were standing at the airport the next morning, ready to embark on our grouling nine hour flight back to St. Lucia. But because of the fact that my parents had to get four kids up and ready at four o'clock in the morning, two of which are completely dependent (plus the fact that I tried to sabotage our departure at any opportunity I got) we were very very late. 

We took all our luggage ran through the crowd of idle people, using all the moves I had just learnt from the Matrix movies up to the check-in desk which had a 'Closed' sign on it and the carrier reps were in the back drinking tea. My dad called out and said that we were here for the flight to St. Lucia, at which the rep spat out her tea that she almost choked on and yelled "But the flight is leaving!!" It was at that point everyone started to panic. She radioed in the captain who said the doors were still open, but only for the next five minutes.

Luckily our rep was super helpful and sprang into action, she immediately took our tickets, nodded, and threw a handful of luggage tags behind her to another employee who snapped them on and loaded them onto the conveyer belt. While all that was happening our rep had taken our passports and without even opening them she just counted that there were six of them and gave them back to us. 

Of course our gate had to be on the total opposite side of the MASSIVE airport so we all frantically started running towards it while our rep ran alongside us filling out our papers and handing them to us to sign while we ran non-stop. That rep went over and beyond the call of duty. Eventually we met up with another rep who was just as shocked as the first one. She instantly picked up the radio and yelled down into it to keep the doors open "I REPEAT KEEP THE DOORS OPEN, A FAMILY HAS JUST ARRIVED!"

She signalled us down a hallway which everyone was running down at insane speeds. Now this is where it gets intense. My dad was in the very front, he took my little sister and flung her over his shoulders a bolted down the hallway. My mom was next and took off with my older brother Thomas and there I was, in the back with my little brother. Now bare in mind that I was Eight. I had very short legs and my little brother had even shorter legs. Plus the hallways were ABSOLUTELY STUFFED!!! Toppled with the fact that I was two foot shorter than everyone. Therefore keeping up with everyone was impossible and just like I had feared, within a matter of seconds I had lost sight of the rest of my family. 

I still kept on running with my little brother in the hope of meeting up with the rest, but as if my very nightmares were materialised the worst happened. I came to the end of the hallway and it split into two tunnels. One would reconnect me with my family heading back to St. Lucia, and one would drop me in Indonesia or some other completely random country.

I felt time stop as reality struck me. I thought about the future, but I couldn't even worry about myself as my thoughts were far too consumed about the well being of my little brother. If we got onto that plane to indonesia how would I look after him? We have no money, no identification, nothing. I started to panic as I pictured our fate. I would be forced to enter the Indonesian sex trade and become an eight year old male stripper and prostitute called Jummet James to support my little brother and myself, and whenever I wasn't working a pole Alex and I would be working in some rice plantation somewhere to be able to feed ourselves with rice scraps and rotten leeks.

I was snapped out of that spiral of depression I was falling into when my little brother Alex tugged at my hand and ask with his eyes full of fear "Where's mummy?" with that I gripped his hand tight, and ran down the left tunnel and when I got to the end I saw the door closing. I quickly ran up to it and put my foot through the door just as it was closing. The attendant on the other side opened it back up and Alex and myself ran through and down the aisle we saw my family all sitting down watching their TV's and relaxing. The anger I had inside of me was immense.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article! Please share, like and tweet it, and tell as many people about it as you can and I'll love you forever! Sign up to get an email subscription as to when a new article comes out, which will be next week when I talk about the guy who hung himself in my school! Please comment down below any horrible airport experiences that you have had!