I could have SWORN that I posted this story here a couple years ago, but search came up empty

Feb 2001: I was in the middle of an 8-month active Reserve tour at the Pentagon; on the phone w my wife one evening, discussing departure dates for her and our 10-year-old son to fly out for spring break (mid Mar)

AA had two SEA-ORD redeye flights, one at 1155pm and one at 1220am ... booked the 1155, then she called me back half an hour later having remembered there was something else going on that evening and asking about a mid-morning flight the next day ... 1155am was the same fare, so I got back on the AA website to rebook

day of flight my phone rings at 9am EDT (full disclosure: this comes across much better spoken than written ) ... voice on the other end says "DAAAAAAD!"
"Hi Ben, what's up? Why are you calling me at 6 in the morning?"
"DAAAAAAAD! Here's Mom!"

my wife had awakened about 4am to find 2" of snow on the ground and the power out ... she woke our son, got dressed, threw bags in the car, and headed to the airport, figuring (as I would have) that they could perhaps get on an earlier flight before the day's IROPS recovery cluster got too far along

AA counter agent asked if there was any reason they hadn't used the tickets yesterday ... which is when she handed Ben the phone

oh$#!t ... I immediately knew EXACTLY what had happened: I didn't change the date on the flight search when I rebooked (yes, bad on AA for having SEA-ORD flights at both 1155am and 1155pm, but I really should have known better) ...

it all worked out fine: the agent cleared them into the last two seats on the 745am flight, and even rebooked them to DCA instead of BWI (which was way better for me in terms of collecting them in the evening) ... SEA-ORD they wound up sitting next to the daughter of a friend from my college alumni association who was on her way back to campus