The more I fly, the more I can’t understand able-bodied people who rush to get first in line to board an airplane.
I may be biased against these eager chaps, for the seated, or rather entrapped, part of the flight experience nearly kills me every time. There is a point during any flight longer than two hours when I’m overcome by the harrowing feeling of ants in places they don’t belong even more than my pants.
When the ants inevitably arrive, I feverishly jam in my ear buds and scroll through Spotify as if music is water and I am a modern flying woman dying of thirst. I listen to something along the vibe of “Under Pressure” by Freddie Mercury and David Bowie or “I’m Quitting Prozac to Continue Drinking” by Jim. E Brown, in order to bear another second, let alone three hours within the metal bird.
I can understand kids who run in line to board a plane, for just like their teenage years, adulthood, or really any day after their memory kicks in, they don’t understand the utter heinousness of what they’re running toward.
“You have no idea the vastness of the horrors that lie ahead,” I wanted to whisper to the adorable girl sporting a brunette bob cut and bangs skipping past me to the boarding desk. “In a few hours, you will be sniffing up the snot of iPad-time withdrawal, and in twenty years, you’ll have to figure out how to set up the Wifi for your studio apartment. Still in a rush?”
All the more baffling to me are the people that pay extra for priority seating. My priority is to be standing, and therefore unencumbered and free, for as long as physically possible. If I were to bare knuckle box in the middle of Terminal E, it would be over the last spot in line to board Frontier Airlines.
“But your honor, you don’t understand.” I’d say later in court, as my punch could likely kill a man, or at least knock the wind out of a small, sickly pilot. “The closest thing to excitement in there is turbulence, and even then I have to remain seat-belted in.”
The last flight I was on I sat in the window seat, and due to the chocolate milk and two diet cokes I ordered, my aisle mates had to get up out of their cramped seats three times. (Really six if you consider they had to rise each time I returned as well.)
Relishing my standing time, I’d go about my business as slow as possible. I’d stare in the mirror for a long time and shoot some finger guns at myself with a big toothy grin. I’d leave once I started to wonder if anyone’s ever committed suicide by plane jump. Mid-flight, that’s how I’d wanna go.
I spent so long in the bathroom I opened the door to find an old woman waiting in the aisle. I remembered her being one of the first customers in line to board.
She eyed me suspiciously. “Were you vaping one of those candy-looking bars in there?”
I eyed her back.
“Just a quick ciggie, ma’am,” I said, and was dismayed five minutes later to find her sitting in the seat in front of me.
“You’re in row 27, where was the rush to board?” I murmured in her ear, attempting to mimic the timber of her innermost shame.
While I can’t understand people who rush to get on planes, I can get behind the social anarchists who lay on the floor in the airport.
Pre-flight, while I was waiting in line behind 250 other people to board, I surveilled the surrounding gates as you never know when you may spot Michael Cera in the wild. My searching eyes settled upon a man laying face down on the floor with his arms splayed out to the side like Jesus if he flew Frontier to Jerusalem. This is the exact position I sleep best in, and I nodded approvingly at his ardent display of self care.
“What did they do to you to have you end up like this,” I wanted to hiss.
I flew Frontier to the West Coast for vacation, and it was very nearly the end of me. I have only myself to blame; I can best describe my experience with Frontier airlines as a toxic situationship– they screw me and then leave me lying overnight in shambles on the Charlotte international airport floor, and then after a few months I think “well, they do give me a free glass of water if I ask nicely, and maybe this time it’ll be better,” and then I give them a couple hundred dollars to let them clown on me again.
I’ve always been one to blame myself first, and on this one I certainly won’t have my own back. There’s no clearer way to scream to the world, “I don’t like myself very much!” than booking a Frontier flight with a layover.
After two delayed flights, two missed connections, a cancelled flight, and a thirty minute sit in the airport bathroom questioning the point of vacation or trying to find whimsy as an adult, I finally got put on a direct flight to Portland.
My original arrival time was Thursday night. I arrived late Saturday night, almost Sunday.
So when I saw this fella laying on the airport floor I wanted to go lay down next to him not in a gesture of intimacy, but solidarity.
“You will not break us!” We would yell from our supine position, fists raised knee-level with our fellow passengers sitting at the gate. “We will never surrender! We will keep wasting our money on your wretched airline, but we shall always be the last to board!”
The risky part of protesting from the floor is falling asleep mid-riot. Especially if you’re in the habit of taking Nyquil at the airport gate.
I’ve learned that if I pop a couple Nyquils about 30 minutes before boarding, I will pass out on the impact of sitting down in my assigned seat. It’s the perfect plan for a peaceful flight, to miss the reality of it entirely.
Pre-flight Nyquil is also handy in assisting the quest of being the last to board the plane, for by the time they call the last group to board you’re nearly too trashed to get up, let alone walk fast enough to cut anyone in line.
I flew a bit to close to the sun a couple years ago before a red eye flight from Denver back to Philly. As per usual, 30 minutes before the flight I took my self-prescribed Nyquil. The problem arose two minutes later when an hour delay was announced at our gate.
“Oh no,” I thought as that luscious dark wave of drug-induced fatigue washed over me.
For a few minutes I sat staring at the other people sitting at the gate, hoping if I kept my eyes open wide enough I wouldn’t fall asleep. Across the aisle there was a family of four locked in on their phones. One lone man a few seats down slowly ate from a huge bag of curly Cheeto Puffs, as if he’d already given up long ago. One girl had taken to the floor after the delay announcement, and laid belly up. She seemed to have the right idea.
I hunkered down, rested my head back on my carry on bag, and closed my eyes.
When I opened them back up, the gate was empty.
I bolted up from the ground as if my butt were a fork and someone had stuck it in the toaster. Most likely appearing quite intoxicated, as I’d been cookin’ ‘quil, I sloshed my way over to the check-in desk.
“Are you on this flight?” The boarding attendant looked at me with a gaze bordering pity and alarm. “We’re closing the door in 45 seconds.”
“Um, yessum,” I said, my lips racing ahead of my underwater brain. “I prefer to be the last to board.”
“Well,” she said as she scanned my boarding pass. “You nearly were the first to not board at all.”
My legs wobbled like baby Bambi as I traipsed down the boarding jet.
“Welcome aboard,” the flight attendants smiled as I stepped on. It felt as if I were entering a Twilight Zone episode.
As I walked down the center aisle to my seat in the 31st and dead last row, I considered all the passengers already belted into their seats, ready for take off.
“You all waited for me,” I thought drunkenly, and almost raised my fist up into the air with pride. “Last but not least!”
Leave a comment