I left our apartment at 8:45 a.m. to catch a 12:55 p.m. flight at Liberty Airport in Newark. I knew I was out of practice, my travel savvy stunted by a year and a half of barely leaving my borough, let alone the state. The ridiculous amount of time padding I gave myself was meant to allow me to be leisurely and unstressed about things. It would give me time to screw up, essentially.

It’s almost as if I didn’t believe I’d be capable of pulling off the simple task of getting to the airport without some sort of tomfoolery. The A train to the PATH to a bus. Google maps said an hour and 21 minutes. How hard could it be?

After disembarking from the A, I walked from Fulton and Broadway in Manhattan toward the Oculus, the mountainous white edifice that looks like a dinosaur-size porcupine from another dimension. It’s a striking building and I always enjoy the dramatic Caprican feel it lends to the area. I descended into its belly to get the PATH to New Jersey, making my way through the pristine, defiant white, somehow un-smudged by use (so far). Cello music played through its cavernous center, huge American flags hung at either end, somber reminders of the tragedy that precipitated its existence. That said, it is a mall. It’s a very pretty mall. But it’s a mall.

The PATH fare gates are spread across the west end of the first sublevel of the Oculus, ready to accommodate a stream of commuters that was still absent even as New York City blinks groggily back to life. I found the vending machines for the TransLink card I thought needed for the PATH.

The TransLink machine was cash only. Unusual in the year of our lord 2021, but whatever. Then I remembered, I had given all my cash to our weed dealer the night before when we resupplied. There were handy Chase ATMs right next to the machines, so no problem.

That was when I remembered that I forgot the PIN to my Chase ATM card. But, I have my SF Firefighters Credit Union ATM card. It’s a bank account I keep a hundred bucks or so in for the explicit purpose of getting cash out of strange ATMs because they refund the transaction fee. But as I was about to withdraw cash, I remembered that not only had I given our weed dealer the last of the cash in my wallet, that cash had represented the last of what was in that account.

I guess it’s true that drugs don’t pay.

I try my Chase ATM card and take a couple of guesses at the PIN before I get paranoid the machine will confiscate my card. So then, using the mobile app on my phone, I transfer some money into the account for which I do remember the PIN, withdraw $40 and return to the TransLink machine. I put one twenty in and press the glowing button that says “press when lit,” which is the most useless bit of instruction I can think of. Nothing happens. Then I see “$26 minimum purchase” posted on this machine that has only begun the opening salvos of its uselessness. So I offer it the one other twenty I have. The machine refuses it, again and again, like a toddler spitting out broccoli.

“Fuck you,” I mutter. I hit the cancel button and with a mechanical clank, the machine transmutes the first $20 bill I gave it into twenty one-dollar coins. Great. Sure. Money is money, right?

I dump the twenty coins into my wallet and I turn to the other machine.

“Out of order,” it says. It has electrical tape over all its slots like some sort of bondage fetishist.

I trek across the pristine white floor to the other side of the concourse where there are two more TransLink machines, eager for an opportunity to use all these handy one-dollar coins to buy a ride under the river.

The first machine I approach: “NO COINS.” The other machine was more detailed about its parameters: “$5 BILLS ONLY NO COINS.” I have only wrong denominations.

I’m in a mall, so you’d think that it would be a fairly accessible task to find a place to break a twenty into four fives. But this mall was still mostly in the grips of a pandemic stasis. The places that would normally cater to the ebb and flow of commuters, i.e., the best places to get some quick change, were closed. The Apple Store was open. The Kate Spade store was open. The Stuart Weitzman store was open. I figured walking into any of those places asking to change a twenty would get me blank looks instead of five-dollar bills. So, up and out I went, back out of the mall, back out to the street to the Blue Bottle Cafe where the kind barista changed my twenty without even making me buy a coffee that I kind of wanted but also didn’t want to deal with.

Back down I went to the PATH fare gates, armed with four $5 bills, ready to go. My time was not as comfy as it once was, but it was not dire yet. I was frustrated. I was annoyed. I was cursing to myself as I rode escalators up to the street and back down into the Oculus. But it hadn’t yet bubbled over into unmanageable emotions that would make me one of those people who weep uncontrollably on a New York City street.

Yet.

The machine said $5 bills only and seemed prepared to offer me a TransLink card that I could then add fare to on the TransLink website. Seemed convoluted. Suspected there was some detail I was not grasping, I but pressed on, perceiving no better options. I slipped my five into the mechanical slot. I pressed the “press when lit” button.

Nothing happened.

I pressed the cancel button, stealing myself against the annoyance of five more dollars in coins. But nothing happened. I proceeded to mash all the buttons on the machine. “Fuuuuck yooooou! Fucking TransLink you fucking useless fucking piece of shit!”

My eloquence and restraint when faced with intractable frustration is truly admirable. I am patience and grace personified.

The other TransLink machine said something I don’t remember but definitely indicated I’d either lose another fiver in it or be the delighted recipient of another massive handful of coinage and still not be in possession of a TransLink card. At this point I decided I would abandon my intentions of using public transit like a competent and economical adult and take a Lyft instead. I offered up some earnest gratitude that I was not broke and whatever the taxi fare, it wouldn’t send my bank account into a death spiral like it might have in prior years.

My baggage and I took the escalators back up to the street to get a Lyft. My blood pressure started going down a bit. It was only 10:30 a.m. Time was still on my side.

But as I was saying, not traveling hardly anywhere (or interacting with the world in general) for the better part of a year and half apparently has some lingering effects upon one’s ability to function in society like one knows what one is doing. So, I stand at Greenwich and Cortland, across from the 9/11 memorial and take comfort in my trusty technology that says my driver will arrive in one minute. I’m ready to put the morning’s shitshow behind me, settle into the backseat of a Toyota Camry or some similar vehicle that smells of berry-inspired air freshener, and be on my way. I could already taste the beer I was going to have when I arrived at the airport bar.

One minute comes and goes. Then three. I look at the app. It says the car is a block away, waiting. I call the guy. “Hi, can you come to Greenwich and Cortland?” I am very tired of lugging my shit around. He’s driving. He can come to me.

I hear the driver say something very fast and very loud to me in an accent I can’t identify and I definitely can’t understand. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t understand. Can you say that slower?”

He tries again, and again I fail to comprehend. But before I can ask him again, I get the notification: “Your ride has been canceled.”

Blood pressure percolating. But no problem. Let’s try this again.

This story is already far too long for the fact that it is completely inconsequential and only marginally entertaining to a small handful of folks (hi, mom!). So suffice to say, ten minutes later, I was walking up and down Greenwich, pacing between Fulton and Liberty, weeping into my phone while a new driver, in a different very thick accent, tells me things I don’t fully understand.

“I don’t understand you,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re saying!” I could tell from his tone of voice that he was being encouraging and patient, so I tried very hard not to let my frustration transform me into that bitch who screams at hapless people who just trying to do their jobs.

“Two minutes!” He seemed to be saying. “I will find you!” That was all I could understand. Two bemused cops standing nearby watched me walk the sidewalk, corner to corner, in tears. Just another person weeping on a New York City street. Happens a lot.

The driver patiently, doggedly stuck with me, saint that he was, as I slowly came to the realization that I was waiting for him on a street that was closed to traffic. Like an idiot. Like a big ol’ hasn’t-left-her-neighborhood-in-months moron. I sheepishly wheeled my roller bag and my dumb ass one block over to Church, where he rolled up in his RAV-4. I practically embraced him.

I sat in the back seat as we made our way into the Holland Tunnel, taking deep breaths, grateful for the lack of car air freshener of any scent, reclaiming my sense of calm, lassoing all my overblown emotions up and shoving them back into the drawers and cubbies of my mind.

I sent Ant a text complaining of my tribulations, my stupidity, venting my frustration, my useless fury at myself and at TransLink.

I think you can just use your MetroCard for the PATH? He said. Followed by, Sorry baby.

So, I’ve decided once I make it home, I’m never leaving my neighborhood again. The world and I will both be better off for it.