Enjoy The Trip

As a passenger you get to sit back and enjoy the trip. You don’t have to know what is happening in the cockpit, you don’t have to know what is happening in the communications tower. You are entirely unaware of the 5 other hunks of flying metal that are lifting off the ground in the same second that your own is rattling out of gravity’s finger tips. You have no idea that another plane has just been redirected so that it won’t collide with yours as it attempts to come in for a landing 59 seconds early. You know that the charming woman up ahead is going to bring you peanuts, (mmmm… peanuts) and a fizzy beverage after the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt lights. Your mouth is watering and you’re trying to decide whether you would like a Coke or a Clamata and wondering if you might persuade her to part with two bags of peanuts on your behalf while death is soaring around with you, talons neatly spread, wondering if it can make off with two jet planes full of people (mmmm… people). While you fret over the discovery that this airline no longer serves the honey roasted peanuts you had so perfectly envisioned and has switched to serving pretzels instead, some prematurely balding man in a button up white shirt is determining your fate. All you have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the trip. When you hit that bed of clouds where veterans of the war that decided Satan’s fate are swapping stories and drowning their woes in tankards of still born’s tears, the turbulence makes your Sprite (the caffeine in Coke makes you pee and Clamata sounded too salty for this time of day, especially without vodka and celery) splashes all over your tray. Damn! You wipe it up with a napkin that conveniently sports a map of the US with all of the cities which this airline serves highlighted. When your plane changes course to avoid a lightning storm, you’re oblivious, reading the latest issue of Forbes that you bought in the gift shop back at the terminal. When you’re done with that, you ogle the flight attendant as she comes around again for your garbage and enjoy the view of her rear as she works her way up the aisle past you. Soon your plane is engaged in a whole new ballet of high speed hunks of metal guided by fallible human directors who may or may not be distracted just now because this high stress job has taken a toll on their sex life and their significant other stormed out this morning with packed bags. Death perks up again, hopeful, but you land safely and get to see the fasten seat belts light turn off and smell the armpits of the guy next to you as he reaches into the overhead compartment for his duffel bag. As a passenger, all you have to do is sit back, enjoy the trip, and say thank you when it is over.