Freedom - $69

Pay phones. They still exist. Hoping to call home from the Atlanta airport, I almost didn´t expect to find one. Given the omnipresence of cellular telephones, the pay phone market can´t be very strong. Apparently, Bell South offsets the lack of demand with a fee of $1.25 for every call placed using a calling card. The declaration of the fee is followed by this helpful tip (which I copied word for word because I didn´t want to lose any of its unintentional hilarity), "To avoid this extra charge, hang up and place your call from a non-pay phone." Yes, of course I could place my call from a non-pay phone, but for a number of reasons which I will outline, I think that $1.25 is a total bargain given all the extra benefits the pay phone offers:

1. The complete lack of privacy. I enjoy talking on the phone in public places. Loudly. Because I have a more exciting, racy life than most people, and I want them to know it. It´s not only about scratching my ego though. I like to give back to the community. If living vicariously through me brightens the day of even one passerby, that person might spread the joy to one other person who will do likewise until the world is a better place.
2. The germs on the mouthpiece. I rarely get the flu shot, but I find that using a pay phone is a cost-effective alternative. It´s like a vaccination cocktail. The exposure to dozens of strains of influenza and colds gives my immune system the opportunity to fight them off all at once. Rather than falling ill every two weeks during flu season, I get them all at once, and then - after five days of hellish fever and hallucination - I´m healthy for months.
3. Storytelling potential. When I am older and tell long-winded stories about how rough things were "in my day", well... honestly things weren´t actually that rough. But with a little bit of exaggeration, the pay phone might make good material: "Listen here children, when I was your age we didn´t have teleportation. If I wanted to talk to someone in another place do you know what I had to do? I had to use something called a pay phone - That was spelled with a "ph" in my day. Isn´t that crazy? Nowadays if it sounds like an "f" it´s an "f", but back then, well, you can just imagine the spelling tests... brutal. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the pay phone. We had to pay $1.25 - that´s 6 of your universal currency chips - to be allowed to use a machine covered in bacteria, where everyone - except the person on the other end of connection - could hear every word you said, and we had to use it standing up... in five feet of snow!"

In the category of "all´s well that ends well", I was nearly denied permission to board my flight in Madrid. Given my customs-friendly haircut, I expected to slip through airports like a hot knife through butter. Well, I should know by now what life does when I have expectations... it provides me with opportunities to find freedom from the shackles of expectations. Sometimes that freedom is pretty expensive though. I was denied boarding for lack of a return ticket (another ironic chapter in the story of my clever purchase of a "cheap" one-way ticket...). Chile has a 90 maximum visit duration for tourists without a visa, which I knew, and without a return ticket - proof that I would leave the country within the 90 day limit - Chilean immigrations would deny me entry. I was told to proceed immediately to the Delta ticket office and purchase a return ticket in order to board my flight. The dream of total freedom - traveling parts unknown without the constraints or imposed structure of an itinerary - died suddenly, abruptly, tragically, so young, so much potential. Its wake was to be held at the Delta ticket office, and with my flight departing in under two hours, I didn´t have much time to mourn. I explained my predicament to Wade, the British man at the Delta counter, and he chuckled. I was the crazy American with the one-way ticket; he had been expecting me. He explained that I could purchase a completely refundable return ticket for - he cringed, became very apologetic, like he had just wronged me in such an egregious way that the words stuck in his throat - for, well, for ummm... he couldn´t quite spit it out. A lot. It was a number with four digits, and the first one was a two. He couldn´t quite meet my eyes. I think this is the part where he expected me to start yelling. But it´s all completely one hundred percent refundable, except for the 69 euro processing fee, he explained. Busy imaging my future as a street urchin in Madrid, I couldn´t quite hear the words as Wade continued to assure me in this "everything will be alright" tone of voice that the ticket would be entirely refundable, except for the 69 euro processing fee, that it´s just to prove to the Chilean government that I have the means to leave the country. Oh shit. The means. The means. The means are in my savings account. It´s 3:30 in the morning in my country. And the means are in my savings account.

Skipping ahead to the happy ending... I went upstairs to a top-secret office area that I needed a special badge to enter. There I was able to use the internet to transfer the appropriate funds. With a 15 kg pack on my back and a tent in one hand and a handbag in the other, I dashed back down the stairs and ran all the way back to Wade where I purchased the "magic ticket" - that´s what he called it - and only had to pay a 69 US dollar processing fee because Wade made a mistake on the computer which he then could not fix. I exclaimed, "Wow! It´s my lucky day!" He didn´t hear the irony, which I thought I had laid on pretty thick, and explained in a flat tone that yes, he had entered the data wrong and could not change it. With the return ticket in hand, I was permitted to board the flight, and about 26 hours later I landed in Santiago, Chile. I have successfully returned the outrageously priced piece of paper, so in theory the dream of South American freedom is alive and well again, but I fear that the youthful innocence of the boy who bought the one-way ticket is gone forever.