the sixth story

Today's short story, in honor of my impending flight to NYC:
When I was 17, I went to Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the summer. It was the first time i'd ever done any international travel alone, and it was before online ticket booking really caught on, so my dad booked the flights through his travel agent. The result of this was that, on the way home, I had forty minutes in the dallas airport. That's 40 minutes to get off a plane, get my bags, go through customs, get from the international to the domestic terminal, and get back on a plane. This is basically impossible, but, remember, I'd never tried such a thing before, so I didn't know that. I got my bags and hurried to customs. I knew things were iffy, and mentioned the situation to the fellow in front of me- he was some sort of youngish professional, possibly old enough to have a daughter of his own, and he assured me that this would work out, drew me a map of exactly where I needed to go, and told me to run. He let me in front of him in line, and the customs guy let me through real quick, and I took off. The same fellow caught up to me waiting for the tram thing that takes you from terminal to terminal, and shouted "there's no time for that!". He grabbed my (very large) bag, gave me his briefcase, and we took off. He got to my gate slightly before me, and when I ran up, huffing and puffing, I found him standing half in the door of the plane, blocking any attempts to close the ramp. We switched bags back, and I got on.