THE FLIGHT
I don’t really fit into coach. I just don’t. My financial status is completely at a disconnect with my actual body.
However, even though my flight had been full for weeks, the airline gods decided to smile on me at the last minute, as some “Economy Plus” seats became available. On United Airlines, they have a class of seat that’s not Business class, but it’s a whopping five inches larger than Sit There and Shut Your Hole Economy class. So for a mere $119, I was able to be much more comfortable for the twelve hour flight.
Who knew five inches could make such a difference. But it did!
As I got comfortable in my seat, and noticed to my relief that, of the four movies they’d be showing us, Scarlet Johansson was only in one of them, I began to review the way I actually felt about the trip.
When you do the sort of work I do, the only thing that can keep your blood pressure at an acceptable level is information. Information about the client, about the classes you’re to teach, about what’s expected of you, dress code, weather, hotel, all that stuff.
For whatever reason, this job had been maddeningly thin on information until the very last minute. And by last minute I mean we had a conference call at 6:00 p.m. That’s twelve hours before my flight was scheduled to leave.
Before this meeting, I hadn’t even seen the outline of the class I’d be teaching in three days.
After the call, I’d found myself unexpectedly grumpy all of a sudden. I realized that, as excited as I was to go, I was also a bit nervous and anxious, too. China. Such an alien place!
After the queasiness that set in after being played by the United Skycap at LAX, I got extremely sleepy on the short flight to San Francisco. By the time I lumbered off the plane at SFO, I was basically the walking dead.
One medium mocha frappe later, the wonders of caffeine had transformed me into a perfectly happy camper. I found myself in a charming conversation with Ron, a teacher helping to escort seventy over privileged private school kiddies to an extended stay in China. Ron was a good conversationalist, the blessed caffeine was percolating merrily through my veins, and I even found a power outlet right by where I was sitting so I could top off the juice in my GameBoy. Clutching my shiny new Economy Plus Fuck You boarding pass, I was as contented as a Halliburton contractor in a warzone.
We board the plane, which of course is a 747. I’ve hardly ever flown on big planes, since my international travel has been fairly limited. There’s just something cinematic about a Boeing 747 that surpasses the more mundane one-aisle airplanes I was more accustomed to flying. I suppose it’s because so many movies with airplane dramas use the larger planes.
Now, sitting in my +5 inch comfy seat awaiting takeoff, I find that I’m as excited about the trip as a little kid on the way to Disneyland.
I keep thinking, embarrassingly corny as it sounds, that all I want to do is to do a great job on this gig. I want everyone to be pleased: the students, the client, Heidi, and me.
wow nice
Ray,
Be very nice to people who are chaperoning high school students ANYWHERE. I just got back from chaperoning 100 Bryan High band students around New York City (dear God, China would look more like home than that place, although Broadway and the plays we got to see was incredibly cool). These were public school students, so no ranting about over priviledged anything cause I know what it took for my daughter and I to go on this insanity (basically I handed my child support check over to the band director every month). No one warned me about the pace they keep up there. What did I learn? That I could never live there. Nothing green, no wide open spaces, no place to park your car so get ready to walk miles to get where you’re going, and high heels? You must be joking. Give me Texas any day. But ya know I still love ya Ray.