Dave Barry - Bad Habits

In the old days, air traffic controllers sat and stared at little radar screens so long that they eventually went crazy, so Ronald Reagan, who is firmly opposed to having crazy federal employees below the Cabinet level, fired them all and got a new batch. Needless to say the new controllers don’t want to make the same mistake as their predecessors, so they’ve learned how to relax on the job. Their motto is “Tomorrow is another day,” and their approach is low-key:

PILOT: This is Flight 274, requesting landing instructions.

CONTROLLER: Well, if it was me, I would put the wheels down first, but don’t quote me on that.

PILOT: No, I already know how to land I was hoping you could tell me which runway I should land on.

CONTROLLER: Ah. Let me just turn on the little screen here, and ... There we are. Say, is that you about to plow into the mountain?

PILOT: No.

CONTROLLER: Oh. That must be one of Bob’s. (Yelling to another controller.) Bob, could you turn your screen on for a second? One of your planes is about to ... Wait, forget it.

PILOT: Um, look, we’re running out of fuel here, so I’d really appreciate it if you could possibly ...

CONTROLLER: Hey, lighten up, will you? Do you want to make me tense and crazy so Reagan can fire me? (Yelling to other controllers.) Hey, guys! I think I got a Republican here! (Laughter in background, shouts of “Steer him into the mountain!”)

PILOT: Look, please

CONTROLLER: Hey, no sweat. We’re just having some fun. I’ll get back to you with a runway right after my break.

PILOT: But

CONTROLLER: (Click.)

Here are some tips for making your trip more enjoyable:

Never believe anything airline employees say about when a plane will land or take off. No matter how badly the schedule is screwed up, they will claim everything is fine, because otherwise you might realize it would be faster to walk to your destination. Let’s say you’re waiting for Flight 206, which is an hour late, and you ask an agent at the ticket counter when it’s due in. He’ll punch a few buttons on his computer, which will give him this message: “FLIGHT 206 HAS CRASH-LANDED ON A REMOTE CORAL REEF IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC AND ALL THE TIRES ARE FLAT AND THE ENGINES ARE BROKEN AND THE PASSENGERS AND CREW ARE BEING HELD AT GUNPOINT BY PALESTINIAN HIJACKERS ARMED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THERE IS A VERY HEAVY FOG.” The agent will look you cheerfully in the eye and say: “It should be here any minute now.”

Never let anybody take your luggage. Airline employees will continually try to snatch it from you; you must ward them off with a stiff forearm and flee on foot. If they corner you, toss your luggage out the window, or set it on fire—anything to prevent it from falling into their hands, because God alone knows what will happen to it then. Never pull out a machine gun and fire thirty thousand rounds into the leech-like cult members who approach you in airports and try to get you to give them money. Some stray bullets could conceivably hit innocent bystanders, and then you would feel terrible.

I first got involved in organized sports in fifth grade, when, because of federal law, I had to join the Little League. In Little League we played a game that is something like baseball, except in baseball you are supposed to catch, throw and hit a ball, whereas most of us Little Leaguers could do none of these things.

Oh, there were a few exceptions, fast-developing boys with huge quantities of adolescent hormones raging through their bodies, causing them to have rudimentary mustaches and giving them the ability to throw a ball at upwards of six hundred miles an hour, but with no idea whatsoever where it would go. These boys always got to pitch, which presented a real problem for the rest of us, because in Little League the pitcher stands eight feet from home plate. The catcher got to wear many protective garments, and the umpire got to wear protective garments and hide behind the catcher. But all we batters got to wear was plastic helmets that fell off if we moved our heads.

I hated to bat. I used to pray that the kids ahead of me would strike out, or that I would get appendicitis, or that a volcano would erupt in center field before my turn came. I was very close to God when

I was in Little League. But sometimes He would let me down, and I’d have to bat. In the background, the coach would yell idiot advice, such as

“Keep your eye on the ball.” This was easy for him to say: he always stood over by the bench, well out of harm’s way.

I made no effort to keep my eye on the ball. I concentrated exclusively on avoiding death. I would stand there, trying to hold my head perfectly still so my helmet wouldn’t fall off, and when the prematurely large kid who was pitching let go of the ball, I would swing the bat violently, in hopes of striking out or deflecting the ball before it could smash into my body. Usually I struck out, which was good, because then I could go back to the safety of the bench and help the coach encourage some other terrified kid to keep his eye on the ball. I much preferred to play in the field, especially the outfield. If a batter got a hit, you could run like a maniac, and the odds were that you’d be several hundred feet away from the ball by the time it landed.

I understand that Little League was supposed to teach me the rules of sportsmanship. The main rule of sportsmanship I learned was: Never participate in a sport where the coach urges you to do insane and dangerous things that he himself does not do. Football is another good example. If you watch a football game, you’ll notice that the coaches constantly urge the players to run into each other at high speeds, but the coaches themselves tend to remain on the sidelines.

So after I fulfilled my legal commitment to Little League, I avoided organized sports and got my exercise in the form of minor vandalism. But when I got to high school, I discovered that I had to go out for an organized sport so I could be called up to the auditorium stage during the annual athletic awards assembly to receive a varsity letter.

I cannot overemphasize the importance the kids in my high school attached to varsity letters. You could be a bozo of astonishing magnitude, but if you had a varsity letter, you were bound to succeed socially. Oh, the school administrators tried to make academic achievements seem important, too. They’d have academic assemblies, where they’d call all the studious kids up onto the stage. But the rest of the kids were unimpressed. They’d sit there, wearing their varsity sweaters, and hoot and snicker while some poor kid with a slide rule dangling from his belt got the Math Achievement Award. No, to make it in my high school you had to have a varsity letter, which meant you had to go out for a sport.

So in my sophomore year I went out for track, because track was the sport where you were least likely to have something thrown at you or have somebody run into you at high speed. The event I chose was the long jump, because all you had to do was run maybe fifty feet, after which you leaped into a soft pit. That was it. The long jump was far superior to the other events, in which you were required to run as much as a mile without stopping.

Anyway, I spent a happy spring, leaping into the pit and dreaming about going up on the stage to get my varsity letter. Then one day we all piled into buses and rode, laughing and gesturing at motorists, to a rival school for a track meet. This proved to be my downfall, because it turned out that at track meets they measured how far we long jumpers jumped, and only the three longest jumpers got points, which you needed to get your varsity letter. I was not one of the three longest jumpers.