My anxiety feels palpable in that way where I am certain it is obvious to those around me. A woman younger than me recently remarked that it felt too warm on the plane and I felt a simultaneous rush of relief and panic. There’s something about a validation of suffocation that feels relieving and also, incensing. I felt rage. That’s right, it’s not just me. We are all overheating in this tin can. Turn on the fucking air. Or turn it up. Or do something.
They passed out water a short while ago, but ever since I saw that documentary about airplane food and beverages, I feel uncomfortable letting them pour water from those large plastic bottles into small logo-branded dental office cups. God knows where they got the water from and how many times they’ve refilled them.
I want to share this sentiment with those around me. Resist, I will yell. We deserve individual water for the prices we pay. This is absurd, of course. Everyone is already tense and frantic and the polluted water is the least of our worries.
The flight attendants are wearing Pepto Bismol pink in homage to Breast Cancer Awareness Month and although the sentiment is admirable, the color feels offensively cheery. It feels like a kind of mocking. You are delayed, it sings, and we are happy. Of course, they are not happy. There is not way to feel joy when there is unhappiness sizzling in the already stuffy air. We are all tired and anxious. No one knows what’s going on and everyone wants to know, and we are all collectively certain that we may never know. That’s just the way that it works.
Good evening, everyone, the pilot’s ebullient voice booms over the intercom system, interrupting the movie I decided to start out of pure desperation.
I can’t fucking wait to hear this load of bullshit, the woman across the aisle from me mutters under her breath. It’s clear that she’s run out of patience and even clearer that her partner (husband?) has lost his with her.
I can’t hear him, he sneers, and leans forward, as if getting closer to the germ-infested seat back will somehow make the garbled words of the plane administration easier to understand.
Does it really fucking matter? She asks.
Yes, Lila, he says, voice filled with exasperation, it does actually fucking matter.
I’m so taken with this exchange taking place without any sense of decorum or audience that I almost forget the pilot is still droning on in his ten ‘o’ clock news anchor voice. I only catch bits and pieces as the intercom system is complete shit, but something is a little broken or a lot broken and they don’t know if they can fix it but they might be able to but they might not and there’s no timeline for information or a solution.
Unreal. Can you imagine if this were to occur in normal, everyday life? You order a sandwich at the deli and they come back twenty minutes later to tell you that something may be wrong with the turkey you ordered or maybe the lettuce or perhaps the deli meat slicer, and they aren’t sure when anything is going to be solved, but you should take a seat on one of their insanely uncomfortable chairs and wait it out
Sure.
Except you know, and they know, that the guy who makes the turkey sandwiches actually quit. He left. He was tired of the annoying stuck-up bitches that wanted less turkey and no mayo and more mustard. But only if it’s low fat. Is it? And what about iced tea- is it really unsweetened? Can you please put a little avocado but like really a little. Just enough for the macro but not so much that it feels gluttonous and requires another trip to Pilates.
Also, the kids that press their sticky hands against a just Windex-ed display window or countertop, leaving tiny, vile fingerprints everywhere. And the bros that are coming from the gym and need food immediately but spend more time looking at the athleisurewear of the ladies who lunch counting their calories than paying attention to what’s actually on the goddamn menu. No sir, we don’t have bison. Yes sir, we know it’s higher in protein and lower in fat. No, we don’t typically make smoothies and if we do, there is no protein powder involved. Just fruit juice and ice, and make yogurt. And the cologne. The goddamn cologne. The headache that resulted was enough of a reason to quit this fucking dump and never look back.
Except no one is telling you that Scott quit that morning and that no one else knows how to use the meat slicer. No one knows where the extra lemons are stored for the unsweetened iced tea. No one knows how to preserve the half an avocado for the next patron. And so, you just wait, and wonder.
You wouldn’t though. You’d demand your money back and hit the road. You’d find another deli that didn’t have such problems and lament that the coffee was better in the old place and they actually stopped using Styrofoam, but you knew you couldn’t go back.
But that’s not here, and not now. Now, I am trapped on an airplane. And people are pissed off and I am tired and there are so many lies. And everyone keeps saying how they can’t believe they are dealing with this on Delta and it’s the only bit of humor I keep returning to. As if any of them are different. And I know that it’s not the pilots or the flight attendants or the folks on the tarmac. It’s not their fault.
It’s just a collective shit pile. It’s just the way the world works now. Everything is broken at the top and it trickles down everywhere. And travel issues are the purest form of first world problems and still, they feel bit. They feel significant. They feel like the canary in the coal mine. When really, they aren’t. This is just bits and pieces sloughing off the iceberg. Just teeny little nubbins of frostbitten garbage. The problems are so much bigger. People starving. People hurt. People riddled with fear and loathing. Everyone is so tired. And so over it.
I’m over it.
Hey everyone, says Captain Happy, me again. No shit. Looks like we are going to have to deboard you for now until we get to the bottom of this little issue.
Right. Of course.
Right.
X
L.
