Flying

I used to really love flying.

I don’t enjoy airports as much anymore, thanks to the heightened security, my crowd anxiety, and the realization that airports attract fuckwits like some kind of idiot magnet.

Last Thursday, flying from New York’s La Guardia to Dallas-Fort Worth, I sat next to a normal-looking woman who, when I sat down, turned to me and in the most hideously irritating voice imaginable said, “You should know I’m not a very good flyer.”

Great.

I had just drifted off to sleep when The Voice, like a bucket full of ice water, splashed across my ears with a hideous screech, “Do you have Pepsi?” I wasn’t thirsty, but now that I was awake and irritated, a whiskey soda was in order. The flight attendant moved on with the cart, and then The Voice called out, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Hey! Excuse me! Do you have Diet Pepsi?”

She turned to me and said, “Do you think my luggage is okay? I always worry my luggage won’t show up or will get lost.” “I’m sure it’s fine, in all my years of flying, I’ve never had a problem,” I replied, as I put my headphones quickly back on.

Later, “What time to we get to Dallas?” I said, “About 4:30, I think.” “But it’s almost 5 now!” she squealed in despair. “Not in Dallas,” I responded. Then the beverage cart came around again. “Do you have Pepsi?”

As they handed her the can, she cackled, “Don’t you have Diet?” Then, after they had moved on to the next row, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Hey! What time do we arrive in Dallas?” “4:30,” the attendant said.

Returning yesterday, I found myself checking in at the Burbank airport behind a very angry woman. “I can’t believe you’re telling me I can’t get on an airplane that doesn’t leave for another 15 minutes.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” the representative said in a tired, frustrated voice. “FAA regulations forbid us from checking in passengers with luggage less than 30 minutes prior to departure.”

“Look lady, I don’t think you understand. I am on my way to an interview that I cannot miss. I have GOT to be on this plane.

“I’m sorry, I wish I could help, but I have to follow the rules.”

“Fine, I hope you realize you’re ruining my career,” the woman snarled, as she stormed off, hauling out her cellphone. I could hear her seconds later shouting, “…and these assholes won’t let me on the plane!”

Remember when I said in all my years of traveling I’d never had a luggage problem?

After an unexplained one-hour delay on the trip back through Dallas, I found myself tired and eager to go home in La Guardia’s noisy, chaotic baggage claim. About 20 minutes later, the carousel stopped turning, all the bags were gone, and about 8 of us from the flight stood there looking dumbly at each other.

I cannot imagine what kind of person intentionally takes a job in a lost luggage office in a New York airport, where basically you stand for hours on end deflecting the abuse hurled at you by this city’s dazzling array of self-important assholes. Still, it wouldn’t have killed her to at least say “I’m sorry” or to have expressed any sympathy at all for people who find themselves in a strange city with no clothes.

What I also don’t understand is how, in this day and age of Orange Level security and barcodes on bag-checks, etc., an airline representative can tell you that they don’t know where your bag is. “It’s probably on the next flight,” she told me. “What if it’s not?” I asked. “It’s probably on the next flight,” she said again, as if she were a broken Talking Brooklyn Barbie.

I guess my bag liked Texas so much it just opted for the later flight. Fifty minutes after the second plane landed, it popped out on the carousel. I returned my “lost luggage receipt” and cabbed it home, back to the relative sanity of my vampire cats.