Thesis: Flying coach sucks big ole’ King Kong size balls
1)I’m almost six feet tall. I squeeze in my upper body by planting my ass in sideways and then don’t know what to do with the rest. Once I slid down, sat on the floor, and rested my head on the seat, thinking that would be roomier. It wasn’t.
2)I’m a woman of a certain age, which means that I become aware of body parts hitherto unknown via excruciating pain.
3)Food has a distinct cardboard texture and flavor (I fly kosher though I’m not Jewish. Airplane kosher food tastes like much higher quality cardboard. You’re welcome!). I tried not to eat at all on transoceanic flights but I get really hungry when I’m bored.
4)No individualized video screens with like a million channels, which means I get stuck watching Eat, Pray, Love and consider becoming spiritual.
5)About five hours into the flight, minuscule little boxes called lavatories run out of tp and need cleaning. Flight attendants don’t care. They’re too busy refilling the fragrant hand lotion selection in business class.
One may argue that flying sucks in general, but in my twenty years of travel, I got upgraded to business class once and none of the points above applied. NONE!
Conclusion: We do not live in a classless society.
I arrived at LAX on the third of July in 1985. I don’t celebrate it as an anniversary, but it always reminds me about my first few months in the Promised Land. There were Taxi reruns that summer and then high school began in September. One of the things I remember most is the heat. I had six classes that semester: four hours of ESL, PE, and math. You’d think that it would have been the four consecutive ESL classes that got to me, but no, that wasn’t it. In fact, I felt most at home during those four hours. I didn’t feel embarrassed when I couldn’t answer a question or didn’t understand instructions. None of us did. PE, however, was the pits. The class met at one in the afternoon and we did something outside most of the time. Polish climate was much much cooler than it is even now, and definitely cooler than SoCal’s. So there I was, playing softball during the hottest part of the day. Adolescence is an embarrassing time of life, but add to that 90 degrees and a game this immigrant had never heard of, and you’ve got yourself one traumatized teen. I’d look around and no one appeared to be bothered by the weather all the while sweat poured down my reddened brow. Then, manifesting all the color characteristics of a beet, I'd sit sweating it out in an un-air-conditioned algebra classroom. I may tolerate heat now (St. Louis + 90 degrees = midnight in July. Bring it!), but I still don’t get softball.
As my departure draws near, I brace myself for my three flights (no direct flights to where I'm going). I used to be terrified of flying. Got so bad, I needed meds to endure even a short flight. I mean, you don't even know who's driving!
The fear, fortunately, is no more, but the physical discomfort of being stuck in a metal can in the sky remains. I can’t afford business class, so it’s the ever-shrinking coach for me. As if the tight quarters aren’t bad enough, being thousands of feet up in the air makes me blow up like a balloon. About an hour or two into a flight, I feel the hold of my shoes tightening and pretty soon, my entire body feels like the poor New Zealander's who got himself stuck on a compressed air hose: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13537084. Once I made the mistake of wearing heels on a transatlantic flight. Took them off for a few hours to flex my legs and when I tried to put them back on, my feet wouldn’t budge. An unforgettable experience of a barefoot deplaning.
It’s one thing to go across a few states and completely another to go across several countries and an ocean. Plus, and this is somewhat anachronistic, I don’t think I can ever get used to the short time it takes to be transported into an entirely different reality. Take my trip to Japan as an example. Here I was, just hanging out in Missouri, and twenty hours later I was in Tokyo. The two realities had little in common. Flying doesn’t provide a good transition between different realities either. If anything, it exacerbates the weirdness. Whenever I take these transoceanic flights I feel stuck in some sort of an airplane netherworld. I am neither here nor there. I’m cramped in my seat, the cabin pressure making me woozy.
I really didn’t relish the idea of a thirteen-hour transpacific flight to Tokyo. My lower back hurt in anticipation. My anxiety was not eased when I discovered that the flight was actually over fourteen hours long. I remember that at one point during the flight I was sure that we only had a couple of hours to go. Just positively sure that it was almost over. I asked a flight attendant but she informed me that we were over seven hours away. I cried a little and not on the inside.
Dear Lufthansa,
Please make an upgrading error. I won’t tell, I promise. I'll be on my best behavior. I will definitely not get drunk, crawl on all fours, and grab other passengers' feet.* No one will even suspect that I really belong in coach.
Sincerely,
Polka Dot
*true story: a friend of mine took the Polish airline LOT a few years back. One of the male passengers got drunk and did just that. Flight attendants were not amused. I haven't taken LOT in a while but a few years ago did so from time to time. It is undoubtedly true that many of the male passengers imbibe large quantities of free liquor. Contrary to the stereotype, however, they do so out of fear and not celebration. In fact, as I observed, many of the men are afraid of flying, but in order to stave off an anxiety attack and, even more importantly, to appear macho, they drink. The creepy crawler obviously drank right past the point of no return.
