Flying The Not-So-Friendly Skies

We went to Chicago last weekend for our “last hurrah” before Baby V arrives and we switch to parenting mode for the next 18+ years. Our flight to Chicago was perhaps one of the most strange and eclectic flying experiences I've ever had. I’m not sure if it was that a lot of odd people live in Chicago and were returning home or if United Airlines is just a freakshow on wings, or some strange confluence of both. Airports and airplanes offer some of the choicest peoplewatching anywhere, but from my vantage point in seat 14E I saw enough to keep me occupied for the entire flight.

Our row overlooked the wing and as we were taxiing for takeoff, I gazed out the window and noticed that there was some tape on the wing. There were four strips of duct tape stuck to the wing! My immediate thought was about what might happen if the duct tape came off. What vital parts of the airplane wing were being held together by tape? I thought of my life and the life of my wife and the unborn child inside her -- our very lives were resting on the adhesive power of four neatly cut gray strips. With the high wind and freezing temperatures at 32,000 feet, my hats are off to the people at the Duct Tape Company for their hard work in keeping us all safe.

As if the tape on the wing to my right wasn’t enough of a distraction, the person on my left made my journey uncomfortable as well. One of the hazards of a 6:45am flight is that people just roll out of bed and into the terminal to catch their flight. Notice that I skipped a few key steps in between there. The one step that my neighbor had skipped that I was the most concerned about was the one that addressed his oral hygiene. This guy had morning breath of the worst kind and it was killing me. Every time he exhaled, it was like an exhaust pipe burning up all the oxygen in the air around me and I was beginning to suffocate. In order to avoid being the first person to die from Bad Breath Asphyxiation, I lunged forward to grab that little air nozzle and twisted it on to full blast. Oh, the sweet, sweet smell of recycled air as it filled my lungs!

So with four strips of duct tape controlling my earthly destiny and a neighbor who was depriving my brain of oxygen, I settled in and tried to enjoy the flight. As I looked across the tops of the seats in the row in front of me, I noticed the wispy strands of hair that could only be the ends of a once magnificent comb-over. Unfortunately, this particular comb-over had seen better days and now there was really no point in trying to fool us all anymore. (But seriously, now… has anyone ever been fooled by a comb-over? Ever?) The flight attendant appeared and opened the overhead compartment above him. As he pulled out a piece of luggage, the little old man screamed. He screamed! He startled the flight attendant and then profusely apologized. He said he screamed because he was afraid that all the baggage was going to fall out on his head. I suppose it was a legitimate concern but I’ve never seen the contents of an overhead bin be emptied out on someone's head before so I'm not sure what would lead a grown man to have such an irrational fear of it happening that it would prompt him to scream out loud.

And the parade of strange people continued. Across the aisle from the comb-over was a very tall, stocky man in a shirt with large horizontal stripes. I’ve heard that vertical strips can be slimming and now I know that horizontal stripes are not. He took his iPod out and started listening to music. With his headphones on, he began mouthing the words to the song. It must have been a love ballad because he closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly to one side as he sang. I admired his total commitment to his music as I reflected that I would never be caught dead lip-synching with my eyes closed in a confined public space.

I can’t say much for the for the flight crew, either. They apparently had not been exposed to the invention of the drink cart. Our flight attendant took the entire plane’s drink orders one by one and wrote everything down on a clipboard. When he returned to serve the drinks he had a small tray with 6 cups on it and served the entire plane six people at a time with long intervals in between as he returned to the drink station at the back of the plane. Now they say that the flight attendants are primarily there for passenger safety and not to serve food or drinks. Whoever came up with that saying has never had to sit and watch a single flight attendant serve beverages one row at a time to a Boeing 757-300 at full capacity. What made it worse was that each time he went to the back to reload his tray, he transferred the drink orders from the clipboard to the back of an unfolded airline napkin. He either has poor penmanship or forgot if he wrote the drink orders facing fore or aft because he kept turning the napkin over again and again and squinting to read his writing. He was right on about half the drink orders and on the other half he had to look back and forth across the aisles until he figured out who ordered the tomato juice.

My only consolation during this experience was the idea that perhaps a cold beverage would wash away some of the foul reek from my neighbor’s breath. I waited patiently as the flight attendant moved slowly up and down the rows with his tiny tray of drinks knowing that the interminable amount of time he was taking to get to our row would all be worth it when Mr. Dragon Breath could quench the fiery stench within. As the moment arrived when our beverage orders were finally delivered, I heard him deliver those fateful words: “Actually, no drink for me. Thank you. Never mind.”

(Okay, this story was SLIGHTLY embellished for artistic effect but it is basically true.)