minutes, then 15, then five. Does this line move at all? Finally, Stuart and I got to the front of the line. The clerk of the no-frills airline casually pronounced each syllable of the battery of questions about who packed our bags and whether anyone asked us to carry a bomb on board, oblivious of the fact that the flight was scheduled to leave in 30 seconds from gate one-hundred-and-something.
They finally tagged our four bags. (One of the bags never made it; on our return trip a few days later the other three bags would be lost, joining it in the luggage afterlife.) We dashed off.
Fortunately, this airline has apparently decided to keep each plane on the ground until it’s full, so a few short, aerobic minutes later, Stuart and I arrived at the gate. The line there allowed Stuart to dash into the Hut and grab a couple of “personal” micropizzas. Since the airline doesn’t provide food or drinks — we’re lucky they provide oxygen — I felt each pair of eyes piercing me with a “the-boat’s-sinking-and-you’re-the-only-guy-with-a-life-jacket” look. How do you hide a pizza when walking a narrow aisle?
Stuart is a “people person.” He notices them, including a fiftyish man on my side of the plane, with an unhealthy glow and bright, friendly, insurance-salesman eyes.
Choices were few for seats, and none were assigned. A smattering a middle seats were available, a bad idea for a man of my shape. As we worked down the length on the plane, I had my eye on the aisle seat in the back row. Would it hold up?
I grabbed the seat as Stuart nailed an aisle seat a few rows up, next to The Mother and two small children. I settled in next to a woman from San Francisco and her 15-month-old amazing silent child.
Which brings us the Red-Eye Paradox: Children should be sleeping at night, not flying. But since red-eye seats are cheap — and so are young families — it seems as though more of them fly at night than any other time. And when they fly, the last thing children end up doing is sleeping. All of this fits in with one of the universal unwritten policies of all airlines: no actual sleep can be allowed to take place. How else would you explain the design of airline seats?
A few moments after take-off, one of the children next to Stuart seized the initiative and started crying. Stuart just sat there, pretending not to notice the crying child next to him, which was absurd, because everyone was noticing the child including, probably, people on the ground a mile below us. Just as all the other babies on the plane began to harmonize with the screaming child, Stuart got involved, trying to be nice to the kid by talking to him. Since Stuart is a wholesome-looking young man with a genuinely friendly, middle-South disposition, the rest of the passengers were hoping it might work. It didn’t.
The child upgraded from loud scream to a piercing, plaintive wail that probably interfered with the instruments up front. The more attention Stuart paid, the louder this baby would scream. After a few minutes, Stuart decided to protect his remaining eardrum and clock out of the row, surrendering his seat to The Mother and her two children. With the silent gratitude of everyone else on the plane, Stuart walked to the back of the plane, where he would stand for the remaining three-plus hours of the flight.
The rest of us were trying to sleep. Ever the optimist, I pulled out my inflatable “airline” pillow. These pillows are engineered to wrap around your neck, gently but firmly holding your head in an uncomfortable position. Improbably, I slowly settled into a drowsy, groggy, drooly, almost-there state. Then, a child screamed.
I jerked awake.
Stuart was standing in back schmoozing with the stews. How long have you been with the airline? Do you go to interesting places? Are the red-eye flights always this crowded?
Turns out they do serve food, sort of: cheese lumps on crackers for a cross-county flight. Never satisfied, The Mother kept wandering back asking for things that might help her kids stay quiet. Can they have an extra blanket? A cup of water? Do you have any kids’ magazines? Could you give me a cup of milk? Oh, no, this is too cold, could you add a little hot water? A little more? Now it’s bland, can you add a packet of sugar? Now maybe another half-packet? Could you stir it better?
I was wondering how long it would be before The Mother ended up stuffed into an overhead compartment. But as it turned out, she had three seats to herself, since her children had joined a roaming gang of kids that patrolled the aisle waking people up. I can’t endorse the methods of using kids like that, but after all, it was effective, and policy is policy. No sleeping allowed. I dozed off. A child screamed.
Stuart was settling into his self-appointed role as greeter and goodwill ambassador for the aft lavatories. He provided color commentary: No, I’m not in line. The left one should be available any second. Stay away from the right one. That guy’s been in there a long time and he brought a magazine.
Meanwhile I was trying the forward tray-table maneuver, which is always difficult for me since I’m six-foot-four and just barely closer to 200 pounds than 300. With my head laying on the tray-table and drifting off toward sleep, the magazine man returned to the seat in front of me. He decided that it was a good time to jam his seat backward, into my waiting scalp. For a brief moment I resisted, pushing back as if I was playing a game of goat on the living room floor with one of my daughters. But he had leverage and I had a stiff neck. I relented. The forward maneuver was lost. Then, a child screamed.
Aside from the passing traffic of bathroom-goers, the aft galley had turned into a salon for Socratic philosophical discussion. Stuart was joined by an Air Force guy named Mark and the guy Stuart had noticed earlier with the glow and the intense eyes. His name was Tom.
Stuart asked what John did for a living. John said “I work as a lawyer, but I am a soul.”
How true. Turns out Tom was also an acclaimed public speaker and minister for a new-age movement in San Diego.
This whole thing took place less than a week after the strange and tragic mass suicide of 39 members of a new-age cult near San Diego. The group’s leader — named Do (spelled like the verb, but sounds closer to Homer Simpson’s “Doh”) — had the same kind of wild, false-prophet eyes as Tom. Tom wasn’t a member of this cult — hence he was still alive — but he seemed like the type that would be on their Christmas card list. Tom was intense; if you were his neighbor, you might fear that someday you would be telling a CNN reporter that he seemed like a nice guy, but he kept to himself.
Tom asked Stuart what he did for a living. Stuart said he worked for a small Virginia company that provides design and publishing services for Christian organizations.
The race was on.
“The trouble with you Christians,” Tom said, painting broadly, “is that you act as if they have all the answers.”
