Good Morning,
If you can remember a little while back I had some challenging air travel. It involved a trip through Chicago's O'Hare on a Zamboni-like transport and a young driver named Juan.
In this spirit, I thought you might enjoy the account of my most recent air encounters.
This year on my flight home for Christmas things started off poorly. After a thorough pat down in which the security officer informed me of the new rules "We must now follow the leg all the way up until we meet resistance..." Bad news. I learned my flight was cancelled.
This necessitated a trip back to the ticket counter to watch an angry man with a very misshapen head (it was much longer than it was wide like it'd been smushed in a toaster) get even more ugly about interrupted travel plans...
"I'm going to Detroit!" He kept announcing to his beleaguered wife. It did not matter that our cancelled flight had been quickly rebooked for the next plane to Minneapolis with connection flights preserved. This man was going to Detroit! Ready to teach the airline a lesson!!! (...and get his a$$ snowed in).
Using logic only airlines understand, I quickly grabbed my boarding pass for snowy blizzardy Minneapolis and headed back through security with only seconds to spare. The airline counter agent who responded with textbook customer service had provided a "passenger assistant" to expedite this process. Unfortunately, with the help that arrived I now had two challenges- getting through security and getting her ("the help") through security as well.
I will not waste time here describing her areas of weakness or professional growth edges there are surveys that can be filled out for that...
I made it onto the flight and touched down nary a light chop or wobble in the Twin Cities. Forsaking all weathermens' predictions, I guess St. Paul merely shrugged at the winter storm that blasted the East Coast and sent it onto Detroit and then Philadelphia, New York...
In Minneapolis/St. Paul I had a layover.
I do not know why they call the time between Flight 1 and Flight 2 etc. a layover. I have never laid anywhere during this time nor find it relaxing. I admire the seasoned traveler who seems to have it down. They never seem to be laying anywhere either but there is a casual comfort to their business. Mostly I've decided these people are engaged in business I would not like to have...talking their numbers into cell phones or typing steadily into a laptop or a personal assistant device.
Instead what I like to do during my layover is to observe and await the call for "special boarding."
I don't know why exactly they do this but airlines like to seat "us" the weebly and the wobbly in the special disability seating section known as the "bulk head seats" right behind First Class...in exchange for a little extra leg room you get a few panicked stares and the unease of having your survival tools (e.g. a bag filled with emergency underwear and reading material) stowed far far away...
anyway!!!...
It is a little known fact that some of the best conversations on the plane happen here. I'd like to share two...
The poorly aging trophy wife...Berta.
When she arrived she sat down with a symphony of sighing and the croissant rolled from a paper bag and tumbled about her feet. I watched as she dove across the aisle to save it from being tossed with her purse into the overhead then again as she fumbled for it on the floor...as it tumbled about her feet.
She never introduced herself just grimaced and sighed as I helped her find her seat belt then she fell asleep.
The sound of free beverage service awoke her clutching her croissant in the crumpled paper sack now like some jumbo shrimp peeking through the sweat stained, oil soaked hole in its cover. She asked for juice.
With the first shaky sip one eye opened. With the second…she could sense she was not alone.
Berta. She's always tired but never too tired to close her eyes again and engage in a one-sided conversation with a smiling neighbor in the aisle seat...
Berta inherited a considerable fortune from her now dead husband Jim the ex-Kansas City Chief and spends her days traveling back and forth among her 4 adult children providing cloying advice and overstaying her welcome. She sits now in Coach (instead of carrying Coach) and has lost a great deal of her fortune paying for therapy and buying her grandchildren...trips, dinners, doctor's visits, shopping sprees. It is likely that she is somewhat hearing impaired and around the Christmas holiday will share how her children insist she bring 4lbs. of sausage for the breakfast casserole she makes every year.
In short, Berta is a hot mess.
My second conversation was with a woman named Sheeva. Sheeva is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.
"As brutal as Goro and Kintaro,
she possesses more than enough
power to destroy any opponent
unfortunate enough to cross her path..." -Mortal Combat Armageddon Bio Card
Thankfully the Sheeva I met was more...
The light giver.
She swung a plastic grocery bag filled with sour cream potato chips and a sandwich and pointed to her seat. "That's me over there." Her arms were filled with other traveling essentials like an over sized purse, crossword games, and a book. I swiveled and groped for my backpack. As my items spewed forth, I smiled and sized up the predicament. I don't think you're getting through here. How about I move over?"
Snug as two peas (one large one small) in a pod Sheeva and I sat. The boarding music hummed the tinny Christmas songs. Brenda Lee "Rocked Around the Christmas Tree," Andy Williams was having "the Most wonderful Time..."
Sheeva and I kept it light and fun too. I asked if she was in the spirit this year, the spirit of Christmas! She said, "Oh yes, I’ve had a lot of Christmas this year. I’ve been watching the Hallmark Channel."
She'd also been listening to Christmas songs on YouTube and was easily tickled by asking "Have you heard that one All I Want for Christmas is Ho’s?" (No, I had not).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC8JA3NHmKE&feature=relatedI asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"
"Not Ho’s," she said. She wanted Bose noise canceling headphones and a Flat screen TV, a big enough workspace to post up and analyze her astrology charts a job she related to gambling.
Using my powers of guestimation, I determined that she was 46?
Sheeva laughed and smiled a flattering "oh no, honey, I'm 62." Sheeva grew up in East Dayton then after a brief flirtation with marriage and a 2 year stint in an ashram (she wanted to find the common thread shared in all religions) headed West...the death of her ailing father and the business of a good friend landed her in Las Vegas, now a single woman with two adult children she seldom sees.
She knows race relations. When she forgot to take her own advice and cash-in at the slots before playing for the next big hit (it's almost as big a rush as sex!!!) she needed other employment. When money's tight she's a nurse for a wealthy white couple who have at times treated her like a slave. "I was volunteered by them to push around some 160 lbs. woman through Disney World in a motorized chair that no longer worked...on carpet!" (for anyone that’s like 250lbs. of dead weight and a brutal tracking surface).
The couple with the woman needing 24/7 assistance sat in First class on their anniversary trip to Jamaica and had her sit in the very back of the plane...on-call. She's experienced the discrimination of being judged to be second class but being good enough to crawl and climb over people to be at her maiden's service...
As she talked, I could not stop looking at her missing bottom two front teeth and how her tongue darted around them sliding past the black built up in the roots--little black dots on dice of bone and ivory. Sheeva's golden skin like a plump, fresh warm ginger bread woman...the flight attendant interrupted stopping in with a basket of treats.
"Cookies!, pretzels!!, peanuts!!!" She piped.
Sheeva, brightened "ooo cookies please." The cookie biscuit. It's not a cookie or a biscuit (unless in England?) I smiled every time at the smell of Sheeva's sweet ginger cookie breath.
I offered her my sign, Aquarius and she offered an unexpected reading.
She'd been watching me too.
"You were mean to the gate agent back there."
"How?" He’d asked if I needed any help getting myself down the jet way or getting from the door to my seat. Confused I struggled to remember. I think I said as friendly and politely as I could after five hours of air travel "No."
"...How was I mean?" I sputtered.
"You didn’t let him help you. Didn’t you see he wanted to help you so bad?"
During the holiday rush amidst the onslaught of panicked travelers with cancelled flights this seemed debatable. I thought I had done a nice thing. Not asking for assistance.
"It’s taken a long time," Sheeva said, "but it’s something that I’ve learned being a Leo (her sign). There have been times when I’ve needed the help and people have wanted to help me so I let them. It’s filing a need of something good in them."
I must have looked doubtful.
I had to turn it around in my head, she insisted. People want to help you. By letting them help, you are giving to them."
Something shifted inside of me. I don't know about other people or how I feel about this as a general rule but in the moment I could feel...it was true for her.
The plane touched down nary a bobble or wobble in Dayton. We taxied to the gate. Sheeva gathered up all her things. We sat and waited for the other passengers to deplane.
“Are you going to let me help you get off this plane to the baggage claim?"
This year on my flight home for Christmas things started off poorly. They ended pretty good. For once i just let go in the lightness and simply said "sure."
Happy Monday,
Amanda
p.s. Today marks 20 years since my SCI. There are approximately 6 million people. That's the same number of people as the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. today living with paralysis. To you I say remember it's never to late...live with hope.
