I knew i t was going to be a crap plane ride when I saw one of the three boys of the family in front of me mumble something to his mom. She then handed him a paper bag, the kind you sometimes find in the seat pocket in front of you.
Although this time there was no seat pocket. We were standing in line, in Houston’s airport. And our line, which was for people who had tickets, was shorter than the line for people who’d received that cryptic message, “Please see gate agent.” That means “We’re overbooked and you’re outta luck! Please enjoy the walk back to your car.”
The boy opened the bag and he puked. Ugh. Poor kid. A family vacation and he’s sick in a busy airport.
As it turned out 20 minutes later, I would have rather sat near this family with three boys for three hours than the self-absorbed git who sat two rows behind me. But first, we interrupt this program because of a fighting middle-aged couple from New Jersey.
No. It wasn’t Margaret and me. Do you know how you can spot potential problematic relationships on planes? His carry-on bag doesn’t match her carry-on bag. “His & Hers” has become “Mine and Up Yours.”
Sure enough. The middle-aged guy grabbed his wife’s carry-on bag and shoved it into the overhead space about three rows behind their seats, while his went above his seat. I was then expecting to see them fight as they flew over nine states after he offered up the verbal recap of the stowing of her “stupid bag.” She didn’t take the bait. She opened up her laptop to watch a movie.
And somewhere, out of the blue, I heard a stentorian voice announce,
“Well, I acquired my degree in English literature at…”
No. God. Please. No.
He had one of those voices that just carried. So I had to look back and who this extraordinarily special man was. He was taller than most, so it’s not as if his voice could be blocked by the seatback of the poor bastard in front of him. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the guy seated next to Mr. Let-me-tell-you-something was hanging on every word. Apparently, he’d been born yesterday on the turnip truck, fell off outside Houston’s airport, and the wetness behind his ears did not alarm the airport security folks.
“Oh, you want to be a copywriter?,” Mr. Talk-a-lot said to the young woman two seats over.”Well, we’ll have to exchange information, because I have a marketing company that…”
This is the big difference between blue collar guys from Dixie and bloviated Big City folk. When you live down South, you call a guy who can paint and caulk your house, install new screens on your porch, reglaze the window in your garage door with the baseball sized hole in it, and tuck point the planter. If you a want a patio, he’ll say, “I gotta buddy-a-mine who can do that,” and both of them will show up.
That’s five different tasks. One guy does it for you, and when he’s out of his league, he knows a guy who can “git ‘er done.” No mention of “companies.”
Up North in the Big City, here’s this guy, as overheard, and not by my choice, on the plane. Five minutes into boarding procedure, he says he has five companies.
“Well, my social media company is experiencing tremendous growth. Right now, we rent space for meetings as needed, but my partners and I have realized we’ll need to obtain office space in Manhattan. it’s going to take at least four more meetings before we can sort that out.”
Translation: I’m still living at home, and so are my friends. When parents are gone, we play Stratego.
At this point, I looked out my window and gazed down at the tarmac, soon to be replaced by a view of Houston’s sprawl. Long ago, I learned that on flights, it’s best for me to get the window seat so I can stare silently out the window, engrossed in America’s majestic landscapes when I’m not reading. Other than “Hi,” and “Pardon me,” and “Diet coke please,” there’s really nothing for me to say on a plane. Nothing. I’ll just fixate on one my precious magazines about obscure cars and peculiar motorcycles.
I was seated ahead of the wing. Not behind it. Not downstream of those delicate whisssshhhhing airfoils with the enormous engine hanging precariously below. Sitting upstream of the wing and engine intake means it’s relatively quiet. I had hoped, just hoped that the roar of the CFM56-7B24 High Bypass Ratio turbofan engine, rated at 24,200 pounds thrust, would drown out this guy. I patiently waited for take-off. Finally, the plane moved onto the taxi-way position, and the pilot pushed the throttles forward. Bliss could not be far, could it?
The engines revved. The plane surged forward and then I could feel it tip back, just like it’s supposed to. The view of Houston’s sprawl unfurled below me.
“Oh, now let me tell you about this strategy we just used to acquire one of our social media clients. I can’t tell you his name though…”
Translation: My buddy put up a Facebook page for the muffler shop around the corner, in exchanged for four used tires for his mom’s old Camry.
No joy. The engineers at Boeing and General Electric had done their work, and done it well, and at this time, he was still coming through loud and clear. Why didn’t I think to bring earplugs like I used to when I flew in steerage class on the MD-80s?
“Well, there was this customer service job that I held on to for about three years too many…”
So, have you ever experimented with the best way to plug your ears using your fingers and palms? There are all these different ways you can apply pressure and each different way seems to drown out different frequencies. The next time you’re on a plane with a constant source of homogenized sound, you should try it. However, none seems to drown out all frequencies, and so there was no refuge.
“I figured it out with a bit of trial and error, but it seems to work pretty well for my promotions company.”
I looked to the teen seated on my left, and the middle-aged woman to his left. It appeared that she was grading papers when I said, “Pardon me, I’m in seat F” (as in Frank) and got my window seat. Now she had earplugs. And the kid next to me? Noise canceling Koss earphones, obviously set to “stifle the idiot in 12d.”
I then remembered I had two magazines in my carry-on that I could pass back as a polite way of saying, “Please be quiet.” However, handing a copy of “Guns & Ammo: Handguns Special Edition Walther .44!” was probably not a good idea, on a plane.
“Did you see he was on the cover of ‘Black Entrepreneur’ magazine?”
Nothing like tossing out the diversity bone to the young woman two seats over from Nigeria, where, Blatherman says he read in the New York Times that the economy is starting to pick up over there, finally. “Hooray for Africa!” Yeah. He said that. Really. She did not strangle him with a seatbelt.
This is why they don’t allow anything on planes that can be used as a weapon, even indirectly. And that’s why I’d mailed home my ½” drive wrench with a 24mm socket, and my ⅜’ wrench with a T40 Torx socket, after a quick oil change at my son’s apartment in Baton Rouge. Had these been in my carry-on, and allowed on the plane, I might have used them to open the door of the Boeing 737-800 and shoved Mr. Windbag out the door at 12,000 feet, aiming for one of Houston’s snake infested drainage canals. But my wrench had fallen into the used motor oil after the road trip. I figured that the smell of gasoline would trigger the TSA haz-mat sniffer, and I’d have been thrown in irons. So I sent my tools home in a cardboard box.
I envied those wrenches. Nobody talks in the cargo hold.
I decided it was time to muster up some self-control, and see if I could put myself to sleep. Fortunately, that actually worked until I was awakened by the announcement of “Ladies and gentlemen (so United Airlines still believes in that binary gender thing…where’s the outrage?) we are on final approach to Newark…”
That’s the airport where handlers are always surprised when a 117-foot-long aluminum tube is about to squeeze out 29,136 pounds of humans like cavity fighting, plaque removing Crest gel. And we waited.
But once the plane pulled up to the jet way, there was auditory bliss. Nobody said a word. The lesser half of the bitter couple from New Jersey painfully eyed the overhead bin where he crammed his wife’s bag. It was three rows back, well into the horde of departees and he couldn’t reach it. Motormouth had finally shut up while he struggled to gain access to his swag. And me? I wondered if it was possible to crawl out “Great Escape” style, through the tunnels under the seats. I wanted off this plane, and I want off immediately.
During my plane ride, they thanked us for flying the friendly skies of United at least three times. Frankly, they were just a little too friendly. Now you can see why I prefer to stick my head into a plastic bucket and travel by motorcycle.
America's Most Important Man! 
Jesus, didn’t realize you were so damn funny, Paul!