Monday, September 22, 2008

Airplane Observances



During my alphabetical jaunt from FL to IL,
something...happened...
Yes.
See apparently one need not carry merely explosives to be a threat to passengers on a plane.
Oh no. I seem to be able to hold my ground sans weaponry.
Now I have never prided myself on being the most coordinated person, however I usually try to keep my gravitational and
directional disabilities to a low murmur on the rictor scale.
So for the following events, the blame shall be placed on cabin pressure.

Enter "heroine" of story. A seemingly innocent young girl, walking slowly down airpline aisle, gripping her ticket
and counting rows quietly to herself one by one. She reaches her designated seat destination and hurredly gets her things in order so the masses behind her can continue on their merry way. She holds her duffle over her head and proceeds to try to squeeze her small bag between two oversized suitcases. Nothing budges. She looks to her left and further on down the way. All overhead bins are filled exept for the small space above her spot. "Come on...just get in there", she whispers nervously under her breath, and then proceeds to give three Wheaties sized shoves. On the last round, victory is achieved, however, the extreme force of her bag jammed between two mammoth carryons, causes her (newly retrieved phone) to catapult out of it's side pocket at hurricane wind speeds, send itself rocketing into middle aged man's balding forehead, and then procedes to ricochet all the way down the aisle as if in some kind of sick, cell phone pin ball machine. Quick reflexes of embarrassement cause our culprit to LUNGE for her electronic device, however as she quickly bends down to retrieve the coma inducing communicator, she stands up a litle too quickly only to knock her own skull into the unyielding armrest of seat 28B. Wincing our character sheepishly makes the long trek home seat 7A ( with the mocking eyes of Memphis upon her). As she awkwardly steps over her flight buddy for the afternoon and smiles sheepishly at the man across the way who is now sporting a Nokia sized welt directly between his eyebrows she offers up an olive branch: "Hey, I am really so sorry about that, I am so sorry. Do you need some ice?" He assures her he is fine. Simply thankful it was a cell phone and not a laptop.
To which she agrees. Wholeheartedly.

Oh Northwest airlines. It was nice while it lasted.

3 comments:

Nate Heldman said...

first of all...3 am? what happened to "i'm not even familiar with 11 pm?"

second...i'm not saying you're extremely strong or anything, but i doubt that any NFL player could launch a phone (without actually throwing it, mind you) 21 rows. when you do a little physics and note that the phone did not start out headed longitudinally along the plane, but perpendicular, and then lost some velocity when driving into a man's skull (which may have been balding, but still had some force-absorbing abilities due to the skin and wisps of hair) it's quite an amazing feat.

in fact, i calculate that if you were capable of creating such force, you probably knocked the plane off course when hitting your head on the armrest as you stood up.

Chris said...

Boy do I sympathize with you. I was on five different flights to and from Hawaii last month for our honeymoon, and it was definitely the least favorite part of the whole trip, besides the airports themselves. I had some sweat-inducing moments like yours, although I can't say I beaned someone in the head with a cell phone. I did catch a nasty cold from a guy who was hacking all over me on the flight from Maui to Phoenix, but that's not as funny of a story as yours :)

Rochelle said...

I'm so sorry this happened to you, but it did create one great story! Thanks for the chuckles...