Dave Barry - Bad Habits

Finally, it was time to leave sunny California, so we got on another plane that did not leave at the time shown on our tickets. But it also didn’t stop in St. Louis, so we were pleased. We plan to go again sometime, when Robert has reached a more appropriate age, such as forty.

There are many things you can do during a long airplane flight to take your mind off the fact that you are several miles up in the air in a heavy object built and operated by people you don’t even know, people who could well be insane careless suicidal drug addicts. For one thing, you can listen to the Safety Lecture given by the flight attendants (who were known as “stewardesses” before some of them became males) just before the plane takes off. The flight attendants demonstrate the safety features of the plane, the main one being little plastic bags that pop out of the ceiling when the plane starts to crash. You’re supposed to put a bag over your mouth and breathe from it; this ensures that you will have an adequate supply of oxygen until the plane hits the ground at three or four hundred miles an hour. Another safety feature is that the seats float, so the airline can retrieve them if the plane Crashes into the ocean.

When you get right down to it, the Safety Lecture is a silly idea.

I mean, if the passengers really thought the plane was going to crash, they wouldn’t get on it in the first place, let alone learn how to get an adequate oxygen supply on the way down. As a result, most passengers pay no attention whatsoever to the safety lecture. The flight attendants know this, and, out of sheer boredom, they long ago stopped reading the Official Safety Lecture Script. Next time you’re on a plane, listen closely to what they actually say:

“Hi, I’m Debbie, the chief flight attendant, and on behalf of the entire crew I’d like to welcome you aboard Flight 302 to Bermuda. Much of our flight will be over water, so I’d like to remind you that if we do crash, there is an excellent chance that those of us who survive will be eaten by sharks. Please note that various windows are designated as emergency exits, the kind that have been known to pop open for no good reason at extremely high altitudes. Now if you will look at the front of the cabin, one of the flight attendants will demonstrate how to seal Tupperware containers. Thank you and we hope you enjoy the flight.”

After the Safety Lecture comes the takeoff, which is terrifying until you realize that the pilot has probably taken off thousands of times without a mishap, which means that the odds of a mishap occurring get better every time. Once you’re in the air, you get the Pilot’s Message:

“Good afternoon, this is Pilot Horvel Grist speaking. My copilot and I are up here with a whole batch of dials and gauges and controls of every kind, but everything seems to be pretty much the way they described it in Pilot School. We’ll be cruising along at an altitude of thirty-eight thousand knots, and we should reach our destination just about on schedule, after which we’ll circle it for five or six hours. That large object we’re passing over right now is Pittsburgh. Or the Grand Canyon. We’ll let you know once we pin it down.”

Sometimes the pilot lets you listen in on his conversations with Air Traffic Control. Pilots are always talking to Air Traffic Control to make sure they go in the right directions and don’t whack into anything in midair. These conversations are conducted in crisp, professional language:

PILOT: Come in, Air Traffic Control. This is a great big jet up in the sky.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: A great big what?

PILOT: Jet.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Oh, jet. I thought you said pet. I was picturing this huge Russian wolfhound whizzing around up there.

PILOT (panicking): Did you say there’s a huge Russian missile in the air?

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (Screaming): My God! There’s a huge Russian missile in the air! Somebody notify the Strategic Air Command!

PILOT: I’m going to try to land on the Interstate.

Another fun thing to do during long plane trips is read the paperback books they sell in airports. There are three kinds:

Spy thrillers, in which evil people, usually Nazis left over from world War II, nearly blow up the world or kill the President or the Pope. If airport books are any indication, there are at least 450,000 evil Nazi World War II geniuses still at large, many of them with atomic laser cannons. Look for a large swastika on the cover; this is the publishing industry’s way of letting you know it’s a fun book.

Supernatural thrillers, in which the devil possesses people. Possession by the devil used to be fairly rare—I remember when it was just that little girl in The Exorcist—but these days it’s as common as strep throat. Before long, we’ll have special schools for possessed people, and the government will start requiring large corporations to hire them.

Dirty books, in which you can turn to any page at random and start reading, because you already know what’s going to happen, so the only question is how many times. Dirty-book characters live lives that differ substantially from yours and mine. For example, if you walk into a restaurant, you will sit down, order dinner, eat, pay and leave. Here’s what happens to a dirty-book character in a restaurant:

John glanced up from the menu and suddenly realized, as six statuesque waitresses and two slim Siamese busboys sidled up to him, that he was the lone customer in the restaurant. “We have a special tonight,” said one of the waitresses, gesturing toward the steam table.

The only other way to pass the time on long plane flights is to get hijacked by armed fanatic terrorists. If you have no armed fanatic terrorists on your flight, you can liven things up yourself by making clever hijacking jokes. For example, when the flight attendants serve dinner, you can stand up and wave your chicken pie aloft, announcing in a loud voice that it is actually an explosive device that you plan to detonate unless the plane goes to Zaire. The airplane crew will find this a very amusing diversion from the boring routine, and will give you lots of extra attention. Another benefit is that you won’t have to eat the chicken pie, which probably tastes like an explosive device anyway.

I fly a lot, because of the nature of my job. I’m a gnat.

Ha ha. Just a little humor there to introduce today’s topic, which is air travel. As a business person, I have to travel by air a lot because modern corporations have many far-flung plants. The plants are flung as far as possible so modern corporation presidents will have an excuse to fly around the country in corporate jets drinking martinis at

550 miles an hour. The rest of us have to fly via commercial airliner, which is less pleasant because federal law requires commercial airliners to carry infants trained to squall at altitudes above two hundred feet. This keeps the passengers calm, because they’re all thinking, “I wish somebody would stuff a towel into that infant’s mouth,” which prevents them from thinking, “I am thirty-five thousand feet up in the air riding in an extremely sophisticated and complex piece of machinery controlled by a person with a Southern accent.”

Actually, there’s nothing to worry about, except the possibility that all the engines will fail at once and the plane will drop like a rock. And even if this happens, airplanes have all kinds of backup safety devices, by which I mean little masks that pop out of the ceiling. You’re supposed to put one of these over your mouth so the pilot won’t hear you screaming while he radios for instructions on how to get the engines started again, assuming the radio still works. So you’re actually much safer flying in an airplane than riding in a car, although needless to say this ceases to be true once the airplane hits the ground. But as long as the plane is in the air and the engines are going, the only bad thing that can happen is that it will fly into another plane, which is why we have air traffic controllers.