This is a draft of a yet unfinished short story (or maybe someday a novel) posted here on July 10, 2003. Further revisions, updates, and the rest of the piece (if it is ever written) will be posted at Acts of Volition. Also see a short interview and reading with an excerpt from this story.
“Please ensure that you have all of your personal belongings from the overhead compartments before deplaning.”
Deplaning? That is most certainly not a word. Somewhere, sometime, some kind-hearted soul who loved her family but didn’t have the gift of language was given the assignment of writing new flight attendant scripts. It was more important for her to sound smart and make her work seem pay-worthy than it was to explain things clearly to passengers.
Here we are, maybe 20 years later, still stuck with her accidental creation. A new word: deplaning. It’s not even particularly short – only one syllable less than “leaving the plane”.
Personal belongings? Stuff would suffice. Granted, that does sound a little rough. George Orwell is writhing in some kind of ambiguously worded hell. I wonder in hell, do they call hell heaven and heaven hell?
A friend shared a theory with me once: When you get to hell, why would the devil torture you. Wouldn’t he think you were awesome for being evil? I guess we’ll find out.
Sitting in the front row of a Dash-8 prop means that the flight attendant sits facing you, uncomfortably close. Fortunately, nothing says “closed for small talk” like a set of headphones. It’s like plugging your brain into some kind of mainframe. You’re sitting there – looking straight in front of you, but you can’t hear anything – your mind is elsewhere. The presence of your body becomes insignificant – it’s just a slab of meat sitting there. The combination of the disconnection from your neighbours while still being able to make eye contact is disconcerting.
Look out the window.
Not having flown before, it didn’t take long to slip into the role of hardened-business-traveller. I’m still just a rookie though. The real die-hards are easy to spot; The lady who asked to be moved to the empty seat in the front row even though she had a row to herself (presumably so she can “deplane” before the rest of us); the people in the terminal walking just a little too fast; people who know exactly the size limits of carry-on baggage to avoid checking-in luggage. All of us here at the baggage pickup are clearly newbies.
A sign overhead reads:
“Double check your baggage – all suitcases look the same.”
That is how signs should be written.
The advice proves to be true. I have to actually open up my suitcase to make sure I got the right one. It’s black with wheels and a little extendable handle. It has a tiny pad-lock that can probably be opened with a pen.
Though it does make practical sense, I’m somewhat ashamed to have a suitcase with wheels. It boggles the mind to think of the stupid old days when people lugged around heavy suitcases without them.
My parents bought me this set of cheap luggage when I was in the tenth grade. I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt and looked beyond the obvious implications of buying luggage for your school-aged child. They were either hard up for a gift idea or the luggage was on sale. My mother is the type who buys gifts without yet knowing to whom she’ll give them. She has a closet in the basement full of orphaned good deals waiting for an occasion. One Christmas I received a cassette player that I had spotted in the closet before the previous Christmas. It sat in present limbo for an entire year.
I’m not complaining about having cheap luggage. You can’t tell the difference between the cheap and expensive stuff (until you try to open mine and realize the zipper is broken). Even if you could tell the difference, I’m not sure I want to be seen as one who chooses to spend his money on fine luggage.
“Bienvenue au l’areoport Lester B. Pearson”
A quick look around confirms that I’m the only person actually listening to the P.A. system. The pre-recorded voice is one of a woman who’s ability to speak both French and English fluently and with no sign of the accent from one language bleeding into the other must put her at the top of the food chain the world of voice talent. However, her abilities lend a comic tone to when she says “Bienvenue au l’areaport…” with a perfect French accent and “…Lester B. Pearson” with a perfect English accent.
While on the plane, I overhead two women behind me, both of whom clearly displayed their veteran-traveller status by aggressively clearing way for their carry-on baggage (a.k.a. their personal belongings) in the overhead compartments. Jane-Business-#1 tells Jane-Business-#2 that since Toronto acts as hub for air travel for the entire continent, it is a prime location to pick up strange and unusual bugs and viruses. Jane-Business-#2 recounts the dramatic health benefits and strengthening of her immune system gained through her martial arts aerobics routine. Details are exchanged.
I imagine I can gauge the strength of someone’s immune system solely by visual inspection. As I walk through terminal, I can spot a cold-virus’ dream. Johnny-Business is wearing what began the day as a suit. Now, all that remains is a dress shirt, top three buttons open with sweat stains in the pits, and a tie stuffed partially in his pants pocket. His laptop on his left knee, he struggles to use his mouse on his right thigh. All the while, he squeezes a cellular phone (4 times the size of mine) between his ear and shoulder and balances the whole thing against a taut six-foot-long power cable plugged in to the wall exactly six feet away. The cable doesn’t even touch the ground.
The man reminds me of a Nintendo game I had played as a child. My friend had a “31-in-1” game cartridge that fit in the Nintendo, but was clearly built aftermarket without the official manufacturing specifications. It was shaped differently than all other game cartridges and only about three-quarters of the text was translated to English). One of the games involved a curiously animated circus performer spinning plates in the end of sticks. The more you could balance, the more points you would get. I read later that the manufacturer of the game was taken to court by Nintendo.
“We’re going to have to re-brand the tech support personnel as network engineering specialists.”
He pauses while a Charlie Brown-teacher voice squawks back through his cell phone.
“Don’t do anything I.T. until I get back.”
He hangs up before Charlie Brown’s teacher has a chance to respond.
Travelling alone means you have to bring your luggage into the bathroom. Weaving through the serpentine entrance to the bathroom, the sight of four urinals reassures me that I’m in the gender-appropriate room (something I’m sensitive to after a fogged-up glasses incident during my first semester at university). While at the urinal, I hear someone in one of the stalls. The sound they produce echoes through the tiled room. First, the foil plastic bag ruffle. Then, the crunch. Repeat.
This man is clearly eating a bag of Doritos.
As enormously unappealing as this is, consuming in a room that is a shrine to excretion, I’m reminded of my own hunger.
Approaching the hands-free sink/soap-dispenser/hand-drying console, I subconsciously frisk myself in the manner of one aspiring to become airport security personnel. My search reveals a crinkly relic of my recent flight. In the right pocket of my grey hooded sweatshirt, a complimentary breakfast bar. The flight attendant had put it in my hand before I realized what it was. At first, I was pleasantly surprised. Breakfast bars constitute a significant amount of my daily nutrition. However, closer inspection led to a combination of culinary disappointment and comic delight.
A Carrot Muffin Bar? First, vegetables are not conducive to being included in baked goods. Zucchini loaf and carrot cake may have garnered mainstream acceptance, but this does not render them legitimate. Vegetables are also not conducive to “juicing”, despite what you may have been led to believe by Oprah and other gadget-evangelists. This brings up another way to spot veteran travellers: people who ask for tomato juice on the plane knowing for sure that it’s available. This is not something one would just assume.
Back to the carrot muffin bar. A “muffin” is defined by its shape (Muffin: a small cup-shaped quick bread, often sweetened). If a muffin becomes a bar, then it is no longer a muffin.
I toss the shiny-foiled “muffin-bar” towards a narrow trash can about six feet away. I overshoot by at least four feet. A muffin bar is apparently more dense than I had though. A young girl who’s age I’m unable to determine (how old are they when they can stand up, but still fall down a lot?), watches at me while I pickup and slam dunk my root-vegetable treat into the can. I stick my tongue out at her and flash an artificially exaggerated smile in the hopes of eliciting a genuine smile in return. Instead, I notice her mother has since turned around and is looking at me as though my face was framed by a most-wanted poster.
Walk away.
Six hours until the next flight. The travel agent had apologized for this, saying that she knew the Canadian airlines as well as any agent in all of Maine, but Fredericton is an air travel dead zone. Moncton, she said, was a whole other story. After seeing that I had a print-out of ticket prices from TravelTickets.com, she apparently felt obliged to defend her livelihood against the encroaching internet-based travel industry.
“We have access to a computer database of all flights for all airlines.”
This didn’t strike me as a great opening statement of an argument for human travel agents over electronic booking.
“Don’t worry – we’re all being replaced by robots.”
She shot me a terrified look that made me think my robot was standing over my shoulder right now, ready to replace me. It took a concerted effort not to look behind me. Her terror fades when she realizes I was joking.
“I tried the Internet a few years ago” she offers. “But it was so slow and the writing was so small. We decided not to buy it.”
I stare straight ahead, expressionless – the conversational equivalent of close-to-the-net body shot in tennis. She’s saved by the tatter of her dot-matrix printer.
“Here we go. Return tickets for one. Portland, Toronto, Fredericton. And you don’t need a hotel?”
“No.”
“My brother-in-law manages a hotel is Sarasota. That’s in Florida. We visit every January so I can keep a tan all year round.”
She strikes a pose. Her skin tone is clearly the result of a tanning salon.
Having waited for forty-five minutes, with more than five hours to go, I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not like travelling. Being places is good. Going places is not.
Without an internet connection, my laptop computer reverts to the status of its 1994-era ancestors: a typewriter and Tetris-playing machine with enough computing power to cure cancer. My attention reverts to those around me.
I’m forced to examine myself for fashion stereotypes as the other people in my terminal look like walking teasers for their own episode of A&E’s Biography. Lying exposed-midriff-down across three snap-together waiting room chairs is Suzie-Tenth-Grade. She’s reading a novel “based on the hit movie”. Her Amazon Wishlist includes: MTV’s Jackass: The Movie on DVD, The Budding Vegetarian illustrated cookbook, and Kurt Cobain’s posthumously published Journals. Her primary computer: Dad’s old bubble-shaped grey Hewlett-Packard now sporting the Grape-purple after-market add-on personalization face-plate.
She somehow manages to make these airport chairs look comfortable. I suspect that were I took look at the underside of the chairs I would find a UPC code and stamp reading:
“Waiting Room Inc.
Your customer attention span specialists
Watauga, TX, USA”
Sitting on the other side of the furniture-island with his back to Suzie, is Mr. College-Professor. He sits with his hands folded over a travel-worn copy of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia, hoping someone smart enough to recognize it will take notice. His Amazon Wishlist includes: Paul Kennedy’s Ideas from CBC Radio One: The Complete Transcripts 1983-2000. His primary computer is the four-year-old campus-issue Packard Bell in his basement office. Breaking the cardinal rule of network security, his Novell university network password is his cat’s name: gzawzski.
Fearing a repeat of the in-flight salad-with-chick-peas (I thought they were peanuts), I swing my laptop over my shoulder and wheel my suitcase towards “The Food Hall”. It wouldn’t take much modification to make these roller suitcases something you could actually ride on. Someone somewhere made a conscious decision to call this collection of fast-food booths “The Food Hall”. Perhaps it was one of those decisions that no human ever actually makes, but someone drips out of the cracks of bureaucracy.
Three Starbucks rip-offs and a Harvey’s.
“NorthEastCoast Coffee” – come on. They might as well call it “StorBacks”. I’m reminded of a Tim Horton’s wanna-be (and who doesn’t wanna be Tim Horton’s?) coffee/donut chain trying to capitalize on the popular “Roll-up-the-Rim-to-Win” campaign. I don’t remember what they called it exactly, but it was worse than “Unfurl the Cusp for Victory”.
I could see why specialty coffee shops are so popular. People who like them get to order clever-sounding beverages with whip-cream and chocolate sprinkles. Anything that makes chocolate sprinkles an acceptable compliment to a leather suitcase and $400 shoes is bound to be successful. Then there’s the people who don’t like fancy-coffee, or are just scared and angry because they don’t know what to order. They get to make fun of the java-elite. Everyone wins.
I shuffle with my South American-themed tea over to an open table, intentionally positioning myself within ear-shot of two uniformed airline pilots drinking fruit-smoothies. Eaves-dropping on pilot-banter should make a nice substitute to reading the news.
Pilot #1 (with the purple smoothie): “Can I have the Sports section when you’re done.”
Pilot #2 (pink): “Here, take it.”
Tune out. There’s something about the half-way point when you are stuck waiting that makes the wait seem unbearably long. This Impatience Equinox applies during airport waits, doctor visit waits, basically any wait that takes long than an hour. It’s especially pronounced on family road-trips. When you realize that you’ve reached the half-way point, and have just as far to go as you have already come – it can be heart-breaking.
My lunch in “The Food Hall” was conservative. I was on the recovering end of a three-week flu. I had experienced an Impatience Equinox a week into the flu when I saw on the local TV news that there was a “two-week” flu causing absenteeism in schools and workplaces. Had I known then that it would have been three weeks, I probably would have tried to overdose on Pepto-Bismol (or of the generic-brand stuff my parents brought me, Peptus Bismuth).
I dread being sick to a degree I know is disproportionate and lacking in perspective. But that was just the problem: perspective. Nothing makes you lose site of your value system and your place in the world like kneeling on a bathroom floor, delirious with fever, waiting for your stomach to leap out of your mouth (after three or four body-wrenching warm-up leaps). The fear of being sick in an airport (oh God, or an airplane) was paralyzing. Just get there.