I went to Texas for five days to be with my dad and sister. So far away. No problem with the flight this time, though. Last time, I paid for a non-stop and ended up in Houston for an hour and a half. This flight was a piece of cake. Kind of.
I wasn’t with Southwest (which doesn’t fly into DAF), and I chose a seat with AA the day I bought the ticket, so there was no sweat there (not that Southwest is a sweat anymore). At least, not until they actually started the loading process:
Special status people always go first – wheelchairs, unaccompanied children. Then Silver Privileged Honeymoon Big Spenders class (or something), then First Class (“We’re makin’ money right now.”)
Here, I must admit that I am a rotten person: I can watch only so many middle-aged men with funky, collar-length, slightly curly hair shot with gray—all carefully dressed down in jeans, black bomber jacket and a flipping baseball cap go parading by me without nearly choking on a BWA-H-HA. Are these guys Steven Spielberg clones? Or maybe it’s Steve Jobs they wanna be. Or maybe Steve Jobs and Steven Spielberg were really the same person all along and these are his children.
There are about three other passenger classes they call before they get to the normal nebbishes. I can’t really remember all the fancy titles, but none of them was “ALA Listed”, or “middle-aged moms.”
Finally, they got down to us. And I was happy because I was holding a ticket in Zone Two. Like having your name start with “B” instead of “X”.
The little old airlines guy with the microphone had invested a whole lot of time warning us that there were only 100 overhead bins to 140 seats and telling us we were not allowed to shove anything bigger than a shoe box under the seat. I was doubly glad to have a small zone number: I didn’t want my computer-toting carry-on checked.
Of course, they started by calling Zone 20. And counting backwards.
So I had a lot of time to stand there, watching people go by. At one point, three TSA people came along and stood forbiddingly at the front of the line, each holding a small open bottle and a slip of litmus paper. “We’re testing liquids,” they announced, and insisted that any person holding any kind of drink (including still sealed bottles) have it tested. I will tell you no more about this, because I—as opposed to the news media in general—am reluctant to give away any insights whatsoever into US security matters. If you do want my opinion of this pretty interesting little practice, by George, ask me and I’ll email you about it.
By the time the guy at the gate finally worked his way down to Zone Three, the rest of us were pretty anxious about our carry-ons. When those people cleared out, the rest of us leaned earnestly forward.
And nothing happened. For about five minutes, we just hung there, balanced on the balls of our feet. Then suddenly there was this surge of people running past us to the gate.
“Did they call 2?” I asked somebody, because I sure as heck hadn’t hear it if they had. But no. These new people belonged in zones had already been called.
“What’s wrong with these people?” a woman said behind me—a voice with a southern edge and ring to it, and she didn’t care who heard the question. “Weren’t they paying attention?”
A woman in the line paused and looked back a little uncertainly. “We’re the stand-bys,” she explained. “We just got our tickets.” Which means that these people hadn’t even actually had a ticket to begin with. But now, here they were with a clear shot at the remaining overhead bins while the rest of us—the ones tickets and boarding passes—cooled their heels and muttered under their breaths.
I don’t normally grind my teeth.
When they finally called my Zone, I shot right to the front of that line, boy.
[A strange little personal note: just before I actually get on the airplane, I always touch my palm gently to the cool metal skin of it. Just kind of weird, that this skin will be sliding through clouds and air too thin for me to breathe. And then I get on. Step over that little gap between the ramp and the plane – where you can see how far up in the air you are already.]
I found my seat: a two seat row, and me on the aisle. Nice, nice, nice. And for a while, I thought maybe I’d get the whole row to myself. Then along came a round little lady with pokey-up, half red, gray-rooted hair—carrying a very small bag and a big bed pillow with an inside-out purple pillowcase on it. It was the woman with the ringing southern voice. She turned out to be charming. But she was terrified of flying. Seriously. TERR-I-FIED.
I don’t actually believe planes can fly. And nobody make me. But my fear isn’t visceral (unless an airplane I’m on just suddenly loses 3000 feet).
While we were still on the ground, the lady told me that she was from New Orleans and all about how her house had been lost to mounds of black mold after the floods. She said that her husband still wouldn’t move north, even though all her kids and grandkids ended up living in Arizona and Utah.
But when that plane started to move, she excused herself from further conversation saying, “When I have to fly, I usually just push my face into my pillow and try to sleep.”
Sadly, it was kind of a thunderstormish sort of day. When the plane began to buck—about three seconds after the gear left the ground—she just clutched. No sleeping, but plenty of pushing her face into the pillow. I did what you have to do under those circumstances – lots of arm patting and comforting noises. But every time the plane tossed in the turbulence, the little lady moaned out loud and shivered.
After about twenty minutes we leveled out, and I thought maybe she’d finally gone to sleep. But she turned to me and said, “Are there any of those bags? Those airsick bags?”
I found one pretty quick and opened it up and gave it to her. Then I rang for the stew (they will always be stewardesses to me – sorry), who, when she finally showed up, saw the situation, ran for some bigger plastic bags, dropped them in my lap and ran for the hills. Later, I rang again for a cool cloth.
I just took care of the lady like I would have one of my kids—reassuring noises, arm and back patting. It was honestly no big deal because she was so nice, and I really didn’t have to move my under-seat bag kind of out into the aisle—because the whole thing didn’t end up being that spectacular. The lady finally wrapped the paper bag into the big plastic bag and tucked the experience away under her seat. A little gum and a lot of smooth air later, my little lady was fine and asleep.
When we got close to landing, the stew came by to tell me what to do with the plastic bag. I could leave it to the clean up crew—who wear gloves. “Or if you want, you can take it with you and throw it away in the terminal” The “you” meaning the little lady and me as a unit.
“We’re not traveling together, actually,” I said. And politely didn’t laugh at the look on the stew’s face.
“You’re not together?” she asked.
No, I thought. But thanks for letting me do your job.
We had a little more moaning during the landing, but really, the pilot set the plane down very sweetly.
“Do you think anybody knew I was sick? You think anybody heard me?” the lady asked when I stood up to get my carry-on out of the bin. I smiled. Only every person for five rows in all directions—and you should have seen their faces.
“No,” I assured her. And since this blog is semi-shielded, and there’s really nothing here that would be google-able, she’ll never have to know otherwise.
The lady and I walked up the ramp together – well, okay – I was just a little behind her; she was still a leedle bit shaky and I didn’t want her falling over backwards. But when we got up terminal, she was pretty much ship-shape and ready to go.
“Now, you just tell your dang Nwa’lens loving husband,” I said, “that you’re absolutely gonna move closer to your kids and grandkids. Because you aren’t about to keep doing this to yourself. And if he wants to move with you, he can.”
“I’m thinking I might finally do that,” she said.
Well, I hope she does tell him that.
Score one for feminism.
