Air Travel Follies
You know...if I needed a more vivid symbolic sign and portent that I should kiss the AMSTERDAM trip good-bye, the sight of the absent-minded professor yakking into his puke-bag across from my jumpseat really couldn't be more appropriate. Earlier in the flight, I nearly ran over this woman who was lying on the floor toward the back of the plane. She wasn't feeling well...(people were getting sick right and left during the final approach. Wonder why? On second thought, who cares?) She didn't need oxygen so I prompted her to take herself out of the path of harm. After all, if her head was cracked open by a meal cart careening down the aisle, I'm sure she'd feel a lot worse...
Oh and then there was the guy that threatened Miss Sheila up at door 2 that if he couldn't use the Executive Class bathroom he was going to "piss all over the fucking floor". Our purser had a nice, long talk with him.
This shit is insane. At least on domestic flights, people don't generally have the time to create/experience this kind of absurdist drama.
Air-travel is a special kind of hell...GaP
posted by Bueller at 10:16 PM
2 Comments:
Sir:
Why was the fellow "absent-minded"? I am likely similar, and I remember a similar experience... that occurred to me in graduate school. I had to make a connection in O'Hare airport, and this was my first time at O'Hare. My plane arrived quite late, and I had to ge to another concourse to catch my plane in roughloy 15 minutes.
The problem was... I was at completely opposite sides of O'Hare!!!!! I was so late I saw them starting to close the doors as I ran up. I did not even get a chance to have a pipe between flights. I boarded the plane after having ran through the entire airport.
Once on the connecting flight, I was served a honey roasted ham and cheese sandwhic. I took a bite of this sandwhich and vomited.
PipeTobacco
Hm. Good question. I think the reason why I use that term was that, while he was polite, he wasn't completely in synch with his surroundings. It IS possible to be so intelligent and preoccupied with cerebral matters that the consensus-reality details get missed. He kept leaving all of things under my jumpseat for example. His shoes, his books, his empty meal tray. I had to gently prompt him to put the stuff away before takeoff or landing. I've heard a story of a brilliant professor at Glasgow University who would stop in the middle of the cafeteria,sometimes in the middle of a conversation...and look like he was competely lost. That would be the epitome of "absent-minded".
Getting lost in an airport doesn't really count. The way air-travel procedures are structured, no amount of common-sense or prescience can save one from confusion. I still get that myself. And here I am having done this for the better part of twenty years...Hope you situation at home is improving, sir...GaP
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