Air Travel

01.27.08

I spend a large part of my life on planes and in airports. It also feels awkward if I’m not heading towards the airport or sitting on a plane. Often people ask how can I stand it, the waiting, the delays, the hassle, mechanical failure, snow storms delays, rain storms delays, drizzling rain delays, congestions, holiday traffic, etc. I’ve grown so accustomed to it so that now I’m surprised when I do actually come in on time or when things go absolutely smoothly or when I get in early, where pilots make it a point to tell you this in bold letters. But if I felt so strongly each time a delayed occurred and let my emotions take over me, my blood pressure would be sky high and I’d probably had hundreds of heart attacks by now. I guess I’m a beaten dog and just waiting patiently thinking how I can get my revenge later, which is soon forgotten with thoughts of hunger and food problems. People wonder how I do it. I don’t even realize that I’m doing it and just go along with it, but one thing that pisses me off more than anything is when I end up with a seat where the overhead light doesn’t work. I’ve been shafted so often in this situation now that before I even sit my ass down, I press the button to see if it is functional. And if it is not, what can I do but just sit in the dark. I once rang the flight attendant to see if they could help out and really not sure what they would actually do. I imagined they would have a spare bulb, but now that I’m so aware of the overhead apparatus, I see that it involves a screwdriver and not just a bulb exchange. Screwdrivers are weapons now. They just do what I do and push the button in and out relentlessly over and over again, but what I want them to do is do some electrical engineering work, get down to the root of the problem and rewire it right or ask the pilot to push that imaginary special button that I know they all have hidden somewhere in the cockpit and turn on the backup generators to fuel the secondary bulbs. That should be one of the qualifying tests for all flight attendants is to fix light problems besides trash collecting and dishing out useless food and drinks to people. I doubt they even report it in because I swear I ended up in the same damn seat with the same damn overhead light problem each time I sit in this section or particular spot on the plane. This is what my problem with flying, truly, is being stuck in a seat without a light. People next to me are usually sleeping or watching some movie and I feel bad asking them to switch the light on for me. There are limited things I can do in the dark, like sleep and twiddle my thumb around basically. Another problem with traveling is when I plan or schedule engagements with people to do once I’ve landed and cannot fulfill them. It pretty much happens all the time because 90% of the time, I’m delayed. It’s not that terrible if I can minimize the error beforehand but if it is a situation in which I’ve landed and we’re stuck still on the plane and just hanging out like mindless cattle in a large crate, that’s the worst. I feel like slamming through the walls of the plane like the incredible hulk and running through everything, steel walls, concrete walls, just to get out. That would be so unprofessional of me, but I can see myself smashing through the plane and jumping down from the plane and landing with a huge thud sound, shaking the earth around me, cratering it somewhat with my hard landing, then stomping forward and bouncing through the heavily congested runway with people screaming and security going chaos all around and then climbing myself back up to the jet way to make my final escape. But of course, I sit as everyone sits, obediently, but I feel the rage building up and there is absolutely nothing I can do but repeat over and over again in my head how unfair everything is. It’s just unfair. It’s just unfair. You get the pilot’s intercom announcement saying something that doesn’t help pacify you but just makes you groan more. You just keep saying, why me, why now, just go, just move, go, go, go. You could be inches away from getting to the gate and it’s just feels like agonizing torture and you endlessly keep checking the time wondering when it will ever end. Every minute feels like two. Eventually they set you free but only just for you to stand up. No one moves and everyone seems to take their own sweet time, like aging isn’t a problem for them or something. I imagine climbing over all the people and walking on their heads like Crocodile Dundee did at the end of the movie as he moved towards his girl. I almost certainly end up behind someone with too many overhead luggages who struggles to get each one thing down or someone who’s so obese it’s like squeezing toothpaste out a tiny ass hole or someone with thousand of kids. In all cases, they are breathing hard as they walk forward as if they were climbing kilo man jaro, and I’m taking what only seems to be like baby steps towards to front of the plane and counting the number of rows I have left on the plane for me to exit. Once in the jet way you would think you could make a fast break through it all, but the large assed ones or the too many luggaged ones would weave back and forth like a drunk driver that takes both lanes, and I’m still starring sadly at their backs the whole way through the jet way and still being tortured slowly by their slowness. It gets worse if they drop something or if something unbalanced slides off their carefully stacked monument they created so carefully, and I must emphasize, created so slowly. Then at last you finally hit the open space and feel what one must feel when one is about to drown, out of air, out of breathe, and burst openly to the water surface gasping the sweetness of air of freedom. You start your manic fast walking technique, but then it’s more like the movie Back to the Future with the flying cars everywhere, where everybody has their own way of flying, or in this case, walking and their own willed directional paths. You end up dodging and changing tempos and almost doing acrobatic tricks to get around people, strollers, those damn stand stiller creating human road blocks! The escalators are the worst. If you are not the first one on, you might as well be the last one. No one moves on those things because America, in all, is totally lazy. They are willing to be lifted, pushed forward by machines because they probably think effort is a sin. Then when everything is all done and you are back in your comfort zone surrounded by familiar things and people you know, you forget it all. You forget all the drama you just had, the pain you felt, all the pent up anger and heads you wanted to rip off, the spiteful words you wanted to scream out, the rage you wanted to show the world but had to show civility instead for fear of attention, and of course, the police. You end up normal again, relieved, slightly tired and exhausted, and the blood pressured is much lower than before. And again as if it was only a bad dream, which is soon forgotten, your thoughts move towards food again and hunger strikes your belly hard.