Heather Poole: Cruising Attitude

Of course, I did not know any of this in 1995 when I signed a clipboard and a FedEx guy handed over an official-looking letter from the airline. I’d been waiting for it since my interview two weeks earlier. I ripped open the envelope and read, “Congratulations!” My heart began to beat faster.

The letter welcomed class 23 to flight attendant training—round two in less than a year for me. Upon completing a seven-and-a-half-week course, I, along with two pieces of luggage—wait, did that say… two pieces? I read the sentence again. Two pieces. And it was written in big black bold print, so I knew the airline meant business. If that wasn’t bad enough, neither bag could weigh more than eighty pounds, and they would both accompany me on an “exciting journey” to a new crew base the moment I completed training. No time to go home and repack. If you’ve ever had to pack two plus months’ worth of clothing into two suitcases, you probably know the exact feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. How the heck could I possibly whittle my entire life down to 160 pounds? I read on. Did the airline really expect me to memorize more than five hundred airport city codes before training even began? How was I going to fit that in when I had so much—er, little—packing to do?

I sat down on my closet floor, staring up at my clothes. I couldn’t decide what to take. I had no idea what I might need at a crew base. I didn’t even know where in the country my base would be. So I ended up doing what any other twenty-four-year-old might do. I threw it all in: rubber flip-flops and furry snow boots, strapless sundresses and cashmere sweaters, a little black number and some workout clothes—you know, just in case. Who knew what kind of excitement awaited me? I threw in some costume jewelry for good measure, then plopped down on top of the first bag and tried… to zip… it shut! I couldn’t get it closed. Frowning, I imagined myself passing through the pearly gates of the flight academy. A larger-than-life flight instructor would place my suitcases on an industrial-size scale and send me straight back home to Mom and Dad. Because that’s exactly where I’d end up if I didn’t make it through. I took out the snow boots and tried again. I removed the flip-flops and still I couldn’t get the thing shut. One less sweater—make that two—and I was finally good to go. My mother promised to box up what I couldn’t get inside and mail it to me later.

Three weeks after my flight attendant interview, with two thousand borrowed dollars in the bank (the amount suggested by the airline for incidentals, even though room and board were covered), I said good-bye to my old life and walked onto a small campus setting just five miles away from a major U.S. airport. I felt nervous and insecure, but my hair looked good, my makeup looked good, and I looked good. That’s all that mattered.

Though my luggage toppled over every five steps, I somehow managed to pass through the flight academy’s automatic doors without a hitch. Once inside, the place looked like nothing special, just a regular hotel lobby. A check-in counter was to my right, and sofas and wingback chairs were scattered about the open room. Straight ahead, through floor-to-ceiling windows, I made out a deserted swimming pool, a volleyball net, and a barbecue pit. To my left, I spotted a bar. A bar! Who knew training was going to be so much fun? A winding staircase on the right led to a landing overlooking the room, which was slowly beginning to fill with people.

“Excuse me,” I whispered, my palms sweating, as I made my way through small cliques of future colleagues. At the desk, I checked in, then slapped a hello my name is heather sticker across my chest. A shiny gold key and a packet full of papers slid across the counter, and I turned back to the room, not exactly sure what to do next. As I looked around, trying to play it cool, I realized everyone in the room looked amazing. A stunning black-haired, ruby-lipped, perfectly pale woman walked toward me, and suddenly I felt even less special.

“Hi,” she said, flashing a cheerful smile. “I’m Georgia.”

Georgia, it turned out, was a real-life beauty pageant runner-up from Louisiana who used words like “fixin’,” as in, “I’m fixin’ to get a drink. Ya want one?”

“Sure!” I parked my bags against the wall.

At the bar I ordered a Diet Coke. We moved back to the lobby to sit, and while we talked, we watched in awe as people continued to check in. It looked like there were at least fifty of us milling about. Like so many of my glamorous soon-to-be best friends, Georgia had always dreamed about becoming a flight attendant. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from making that dream a reality, not even a jealous boyfriend, who, I quickly learned, had just moved to North Carolina.

“I told him I’d see him before he knew it, but he ain’t happy, not one little bit. Men!” she snorted, and then took a sip of Diet Dr Pepper.

Georgia was not alone. All of us had left someone behind: family, friends, loved ones. I’d only been dating Paul for six months, and he’d actually been more than supportive of my new career choice. Probably because it gave him the opportunity to work around the clock in order to get both his landscaping and car-detailing businesses off the ground. To be perfectly honest, though, I had been looking for a way out of the relationship for a while now.

“It’s just that he’s really sweet and I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” I told Georgia. I made a face. “I’m not big on confrontation.”

“And that, sweetie, is why the airline hired you!”

I didn’t understand it then, but Georgia may have been on to something. At that moment, all I knew was that we were spilling our life stories and we’d only known each other for ten minutes! Already we were the best of friends.

“You know, we oughtta room together!” Georgia said.

I was thrilled and relieved. But it turned out that we weren’t allowed to pick our roommates; they were preassigned. I promised to meet Georgia for dinner after we each dropped our bags in our rooms. I wasn’t sure how long that would take her to accomplish. By the time I arrived, I’d thinned my luggage down to seventy-eight pounds even, but Georgia’s version of packing light seemed to involve eight humongous bags that weighed about three tons. Each.

With a room key pressed firmly in the palm of my hand, I put on my brightest first-class smile and tried as best I could to roll my bags into the elevator without crashing into anyone—mission unaccomplished. Two floors up, I stood in front of my new home, slid the key into the keyhole, and took a deep breath. The moment I cracked the door open, I was blown away by one big, “Howdy! I’m Linda.”

I stood speechless in the hallway, taking Linda in: teased bouffant, orange tan, turquoise jewelry, teensy-tiny blue-jean skirt, electric blue cowboy boots, matching blue eye shadow. My roommate, the person with whom I would spend the next two months in a space that looked to be the size of a small college dorm room, was a cowgirl. Well, the word “girl” might be a little misleading. Linda actually looked older than my mother. Yeehaw.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Heather,” I finally got out as I reluctantly entered and plopped down on a hard twin bed. “Guess this one’s mine.”

Linda picked up the phone and I reminded myself not to judge a book by its cover. But it was just so hard not to as I noted cowboy boots in every color lining the closet floor. While I tried to make do with half of a tiny closet, I overheard Linda saying to someone that this was her second chance at life. That got me wondering, what went wrong the first time around? As I hung up seventy-eight pounds of casual business attire, the dress code for the flight academy, I listened to Linda telling at least ten different people she loved them. When she hung up the phone, I thought I saw her wipe away a tear.