Airplane Rides!

Being on planes so very often, you get over your fear of… ‘what do I have to do?’, ‘where do I have to go?’, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’, ‘I hope I don’t do something stupid like get lost and miss my flight!’, ‘ damn I don’t have time and this line is too long!’

Check in. Put on a nice smile and hope that you’ll get an upgrade. Sweet talk the pretty young woman on the counter to get the best seat if not an upgrade! If you’re a girl you bat your eyelids at the guy behind the counter… flirt a bit and get your upgrade or best seat even! Then there comes the emigrations. Ever noticed that 9 out of 10 of those people are always grumpy? It’s like they don’t know how to smile. “Passport and boarding card please!” Oh well. After you’ve done all this there is the waiting to board. Oh this is where you have to be creative and find something to do! Read a book, listen to music, people watch, fall asleep (with the fear of over sleeping or not hearing your boarding call!)

Finally after your waiting there is a call. “Would passengers traveling by flight **** please start boarding. We would like to invite our first and business class passengers to board at their convenience.” And all other economy passengers are boarding how exactly. You go through into this small world. Find your seat and make yourself comfy.

Then you have the normal in flight announcements. The instructions on how to wear your seatbelt! Its like Jerry Seinfeld said, ‘they have to show us in case none of us have been in a car since 1960!’ (I’m not sure if these are exact quotes… because I can’t seem to remember them!) Then they come and pass by you with your one tiny bag of peanuts!  O thank you for your generosity! I’ll eat them one by one… because there are so many of them! Of course the pilot comes on introducing himself and how exactly to the T he is going to be flying you from point A to point B. “we’ll be flying at 20,000 feet today and close to Timbuktu we’ll decent to 10,000!” Just get us there safe is all we are thinking! And of course, not to miss the flight attendants who come and always shut the curtains which separate the business class and economy class curtains; giving you that look, the look that says, “Only if you had worked a bit harder!”

You’re always hoping and praying that you get an interesting person sitting next to you. But that chances of that are slim to none! Its either eats a lot guy and then farts a lot too! Or the dear old lady who always wants to talk to you. The new parents with their first child and the first flight with the child; not knowing how to make the baby stop screaming and shouting and crying! Or the dude who has to fall asleep and keeping falling all over you. And to top all that, the guy who is sitting next to you praying hard that the flight won’t crash. The guy who has a fear of flying!

All in all a good flight I guess…!

For all you happy travelers out there... I hope you start your people and situation watching soon enough!

“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.” ~Rita Mae Brown

~number 9