CHILLAXING

I don’t claim to be chill, but I become even less chill when someone tells me to chillax.

When I’m really excited about something and someone says, “Chillax,” it’s even worse; it’s what my friend calls “squishing the little bird inside of you.”

Take, for example, the time I was telling an ex-Mr. Wrong about something or other, chattering fast and with passion.

Ex-Mr. W interrupted me with up and down hand motions, as though he were patting the heads of a pair of dobermans simultaneously, and said, “Calm down. Speak slowly. I can’t follow you when you talk that fast.”

Yeah, right, Mr. Law Professor who can’t follow a really easy story about biking or an encounter with an old friend or that kind of thing.

Well, that’s water over the bridge (or is it under the dam? or over the dam? or under the bridge?).

I bring up all this because the other day I experienced total chill when I should have been tense.

I was helping my daughter the whole day (which admittedly included trips to buy Pinkberry yogurt with fruit) as she packed up her dorm room and sent home 6 boxes, each the weight of a wrestler, for the amount it cost for my first car.

Time was running out with no help to get the huge awkward boxes to the sketchy van that had a handwritten “UPS” sign taped to its side on a nearby street.

I could hardly watch her small-boned frame hunched over as she lifted each carton with her arms barely able to hug the boxes enough to haul them down two flights of stairs.

TRAVEL TIP: Tie everything you own to your wheelie bag so you don't have to check luggage.

To distract myself I checked our flight status: a half hour late. Yay, except the one time I relied on the computer about a late flight, it turned out not to be late and I missed the plane.

Nonetheless, even though I’m unable to chill when running on time, we were running 45 minutes behind and I was chill!

This may not seem like a big deal to you, but I become anxious about getting somewhere, even when it doesn’t matter what time I arrive, which is not to say I’m punctual–I’m not–I’m simply anxious. Anxious and always running behind.

In this case, as always, I had been careful not to reserve the last flight of the evening, in the event the flight was cancelled for weather or whatever. A worrywart performs advance damage control.

Unless you have ever been that chill yourself about something like making a plane, you can’t imagine what a

thrill it is to take a chill pill. Or, maybe you are always chill, in which case you also could never know how, well, chill it feels to go from being a heart-pounding worrier to a chillaxer.

How do you get yourself to chillax when you are late for a flight?

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