Flying in the No Cry zone

Flying can be fun, I suppose, if you don’t use a plane. But like most people, I find this difficult to do and end up in a commercial aircraft. On some flights, the experience has been less than entertaining. In the case of a recent long-haul flight I took from San Francisco to Chicago, it was psychologically painful.

This was not my first time on this sector. The last time I had travelled, the airline had served nothing to eat for the entire five hours — it was bad. However, on the previous occasion, they had served a meal, which was worse. So this time, I bought a pizza to go. During check-in, my request for a seat in the emergency exit row, which I routinely make without much hope, was surprisingly granted. 

At the gate I joined the herd standing in confused disarray like cows on a pasture without grass. When we boarded the plane, two flight attendants stood in the gangway to welcome us. The leader was a six-foot brunette. Her uniform, probably tailored before she took up body-building, stretched on her skin, accentuating rippling muscles. With hands on hips and eyebrows puckered in a frown, she watched us board. We slunk past, avoiding eye contact. As we reached our seats, she helped us store our luggage by barking instructions from where she stood: “Sir! You in the blue shirt! Put your suitcase lengthwise. Now keep moving! And you in black spectacles! Move your bag to the left…”

The other flight attendant was much younger, a mere girl of about fifty, less muscular but markedly grumpier.
As I stowed my bags (“Put it deeper… push!”) and clambered over the legs of a thickset man at the aisle, my joy of getting the emergency exit row evaporated: in this aircraft, the row had no extra leg room. What’s more, it had no window seat either, affording extra leg room to the person in the next row, who had already stretched his legs out luxuriously.

Soon the aircraft was moving. The captain’s cheery welcome boomed through the speakers. He thanked us for choosing his airline, apologised for the long taxiing (“Don’t worry, folks, we will fly you to Chicago — we’re not driving the whole way”) and made droll remarks about the weather.

Meanwhile our flight attendants, Commander and Grumps, began the demonstration of the use of oxygen mask and other paraphernalia with bored, mechanical movements accompanying the bored, mechanical voice on the intercom. As the voice droned on about air bags and water landings, I was overcome with lassitude and my eyelids grew heavy.

The next thing I remember is a heavy hand shaking my shoulder violently. 

“Yes…what?” I spluttered, jerking awake.

“Did you hear the safety announcement, Sir?” Commander’s face was four inches from mine.

“Eh? Yes, of course.”

“And, seated at the exit row, are you prepared to perform the functions?” 

I nodded.

“What are they?”

“Pardon?”

“What are the functions you may be required to perform?”

“Oh, the usual ones, you know…,” I said.

“Yes, Sir, I know. But do you know? Can you tell me what they are?”

Commander’s strong voice carried across the aircraft.

Conversations ceased as everyone listened to us. 

I muttered something in nervous embarrassment.

“Speak up, Sir! None of us can hear you. Can we?” She looked around in challenge, then turned back to me. “You didn’t hear a word… you were fast asleep, weren’t you?”

I nodded. Magnanimously, Commander did not pinch my ears; with a terse admonishment never to do it again, she turned away. Relief swept over me and my fellow passengers. Someone seated behind me thumped my back and a group of schoolgirls nearby clapped.

Once we were airborne, the attendants brought out the drinks trolley. The portly gentleman beside me asked for cranberry juice.  “I don’t have any cranberry juice left on the trolley…. Sir,” said Grumps.

I expected him to change his request, apologising for his effrontery, but the man was bold.  “Please get it from the galley.” 
“I’ll get back to you,” said Grumps. 

She never did. As I sipped my Coca Cola, I could feel my neighbour’s baleful glare on my neck. I badly wanted my pizza with my drink but it was in the overhead bin. The thought of making my disgruntled neighbour get up while I retrieved it was too daunting. And the thought of summoning Commander or Grumps to pass me the pizza was bloodcurdling. 

I looked up at the television screen. I think they were showing a western film. Or it could have been a documentary about horses. Or crocodiles. Sitting ten feet behind the ten inch screen, I couldn’t be sure. 

For the next three hours, I sat bolt upright (my chair’s recline function was not working) thinking alternatively about my confrontation with Commander and the pizza sitting tantalisingly close above me. As we landed in Chicago, I trotted out of the aircraft in my eagerness to get away. The one silver lining of such air travel is that it makes every city, be it intrinsically delightful or dreary, an attractive place to land.