The flight progresses after everyone ignores the safety video. Our dinners are flung at us, after ostensibly allowing us to choose between chef’s specialties. I am of the opinion that this supposed choice is merely a formality without any real-life consequences, and the flight attendants simply give you whatever the hell they pull out of
The flight progresses after everyone ignores the safety video.
Our dinners are flung at us, after ostensibly allowing us to choose between chef’s specialties. I am of the opinion that this supposed choice is merely a formality without any real-life consequences, and the flight attendants simply give you whatever the hell they pull out of the trolley. The cattle herds won’t know the difference, anyway. We have a selection of delicacies, and our choices today are Chicken Sort Of and Pseudobeef. I relish the industrial taste and texture of my meal, accompanied with the unique chrome flavor of mass-produced white wine.
After the meal, the entire plane feels the urge to use the toilet and line up (again!) to avail themselves of the luxuriously appointed SkyPotty. As I am not immune to the vagaries of nature, I reflect during my cramped sojourn to this little box how much simpler and roomier it would be if the life vests under our seats were replaced by infinitely more useful peepee basins. I also contemplate how the airlines have obviously escaped the gaze of any local health department, noting the proximity of a public toilet in the center of the area in which our recent feasts were painstakingly reheated.
After the required rituals of fill-up and empty, the in-flight movies begin. Since our flight will be roughly seven hours, we have not one, but two films that the Academy Awards nominated for nothing: the lamentable Spy Kids and equally distressing Heartbreakers. I resolve to ignore both of these and instead chat with Border Patrol Man from Cork on my left, though I eventually find it difficult to tear myself away from a conversation of which I have tired when the nearest distracting thing is thirty-five thousand feet straight down.
We press on through the air. The duty-free cart rolls by, and I am amazed at how they are able to offer merchandise so much cheaper than conventional shops but mysteriously don’t. The mid-flight snack is served (cheese and crackers) and the drinks trolley comes by. Oddly though, our choices for beverages have been whittled down to the impressive array of A.) Water and B.) Orange juice. I daydream about where the rest of the drinks could have gone. But my reverie is broken by my wife, who wakes from her nap and has to use the flying loo. Our other seatmate and I agree that Synchronized Airplane Seat Gymnastics should qualify as an Olympic sport as we experience the gyrations and maneuvering that the three of us are required to perform.
Eventually we land, freeing ourselves of the accumulated exhalations, farts and belches of our fellow passengers in our hermetically sealed flying buzz tube, and have a lively round of Musical Gates. Our plane hadn’t left Toronto by the time it was schedule to leave Newark with us on it. Eventually provisions are made for our plane to depart, but the malicious elf responsible for scheduling has changed our departure gate to another one from which several other flights were supposed to leave. This results in an impromptu gathering of several hundred passengers bound for Norfolk, Denver, Miami and New Orleans. The waiting herds represent a multiplicity of cultures, races and languages. An economy class United Nations.
I study my surroundings for perhaps the four hundredth time. Across the concourse, a group of youths are standing next to each other, inexplicably doing the wave. They don’t seem to be greeting anyone or cheering anything in particular. Perhaps they are a group of illegal immigrants celebrating their presence in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Wave.
Seated directly across from me is a squawky oriental family. The mother is trying to catch the chunks that the one-year-old is vomiting up, while the rest of the family chats on among themselves. I close my eyes and listen to the cacophony. Whatever language they are speaking, it sounds the way voices do when heard from underwater. I allow the individual voices and puke sounds to melt into the general din of the airport as I retreat from the sensory overload.
Later, on board the plane it becomes apparent that this is not the aircraft that was originally scheduled, as several boarding passengers lodge complaints that the seats they are assigned to do not actually exist on this particular model aircraft. Sensing an opportunity, my wife suggests that we offer ourselves to give up our seats, for proper compensation of course. The flight crew is delighted at this and we happily exit the plane back out into the mêlée to collect our goodies. Congratulating myself on listening to my wife for once, we find ourselves very pleased with our decision, as we score first-class tickets for tomorrow, plus an overnight stay in the Airport Marriott, which turns out to be very nice with excellent food, meal vouchers, and $400 worth of travel vouchers each! For two people who are accustomed to traveling on a poor backpacker’s budget, we are in ecstasy as we think of how to use our travel vouchers.
In the end, it has turned out pretty good for us. But I look out at the other misfortunates in their throngs at the airport, and I pity the plight of the modern air traveler. I have done nothing to change this situation for them or myself; I have merely secured some valuable but short-term prizes for myself. I will suffer on in silence at the iniquity of it all. I will continue to dress up to fly, and children will continue to caterwaul throughout flights, as the one in row eight so profoundly demonstrated throughout every minute of the seven-hour trip. I will continue to sample airline food in the hope, however ethereal, that I will find an Entrée a La Something that some airline chef really put his soul into. On the other hand, maybe I’ll just book a ticket on Greyhound. Either that or the QE 2.
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