What is it about online check in for air travel that brings out the competitor in me, especially for Southwest Airlines? It is simply not enough for me to be assigned an “A” boarding pass. What I really want is to be one of the first TEN people to have an “A” boarding pass. One can tell where one ranks within the broader classifications of A, B and C. I always look at the bottom left hand corner of my boarding pass to see just how many people logged in before me. In the real world I know it doesn’t matter a bit. The first person to get an A is in line with the last one to get an A. It’s not like they line you up according to when you got your boarding pass. If you get there first, you are in line first. And the funny thing is, I don’t really care to be first in line. As long as I am at my gate before the A line begins to board I’m fine. I just like to know that I actually RECEIVED my A status before everyone else. Silent victory.
On a business trip I had a connecting flight in Las Vegas on my way home from Los Angeles. Las Vegas fascinates me. Mostly in the same way that videos of people breaking ankles while skateboarding or falling down manholes fascinate me. The drama that Las Vegas breeds is like watching a runaway train careening over the side of a compromised trestle. And the drama unfolds against a gaudy backdrop of neon, glitter, cheap cigars and gold lamee.
The A line at the gate queued right past a television monitor. I was standing right in front of the television, “A” boarding pass in hand (#6 thank you very much). I noticed a soap opera was airing. I don’t know which one but I am almost positive that it wasn’t All My Children because my friend’s sister is a lead actress on that soap and I didn’t see her clinging to life in the hospital, body broken but makeup perfect. Or drowning in a sinking car that was just driven into a lake filled with electric eels. Or even walking in on her stepmother/aunt playing Mrs. Robinson with the pool boy/lover/ex-con/evil twin. Ordinarily I find these and most other scenarios on soap operas rather unrealistic. But, I was in the Las Vegas airport, which is the next best thing to actually being IN Las Vegas. Somehow the current scene involving a TV doctor who was struggling with the decision to save the life of his ex-wife (whom he still loved) injured in a suspicious rickshaw accident, or the life of his (nearly illegally young) fiancée who was the victim of a stampede during a late-night fire in the bar owned by her ex-boyfriend, did not strike me as far-fetched.
The AARP card-carrying couple in line in front of me scowled at the television and then at each other.
“Ah cain’t stand the soap operas,” the woman spat to no one in particular.
Her husband looked out the window, across the tarmac to the gaudy casinos beyond.
“And this TEE-vee is so loud!” she remarked with disdain.
“Mmhmm,” her husband responded.
For the next few minutes everyone waiting to board flight #1107 was a captive audience to the disgruntled woman offering her Southern-fried commentary of the events unfolding on the screen.
“Ah don’t think anyone’s watchin’ this mess! Why cain’t they just turn it OFF?”
Why don’t we just turn YOU off?
“Ah cain’t stand the way that girl talks. That VOICE!”
Really? How ironic.
“He idn’t even that cute. How’d he get on this show ANYWAY?”
Everyone’s a casting director…
“Why does it have to be so LOUD???”
Again, the irony.
“Ah’m gon’ git someone to turn this thang OFF!”
Don’t be gone long…
With that, she stormed over to the gate counter, her fuchsia nylon sweat suit loudly swishing like sandpaper on an old two-by-four. She returned far too soon for my liking, the vibrations of her angry stomping preceding her.
“They said they cain’t do a thang about it! Now do you believe THAT?”
“Mmhmm…” grunted the man, still lost somewhere outside the gate window, longing for one more try at the slots.
After a few more minutes of huffing and puffing, something happened that was highly entertaining for all the wrong reasons. The woman exploded in a fit of rage, attacking the Formica case housing the television. Screeching and clawing, she managed to pry open the frame around the monitor and turned off the set altogether. The screen went black, casing frame dangling by a piece of Velcro.
Um, I was watching that.
“There, now there’s some peace and quiet for everyone.”
We should be so lucky.
The woman’s cell phone rang. “Hey, Dorothy…yeah, we’re just waiting to git on the plane…we’re still in Las Vegas…mmhmm…Oh you know your daddy…he only won enough to buy us TWO tickets to the BUF-fet…Ah told him that but he don’t listen…Well the rolls was dry an’ the meat was so bloody Ah could barely look at it…mmhmm…Janice told you what? Ah tell you what, Dot, that little sister of yours is gon’ drive me mad…Ah know…mmhmm…Ah know…mmhmm…AH KNOW! It’s that lazy husband of hers tellin’ her thangs like that…Ain’t you glad you didn’t marry him when he asked you? He’s so stupid sometimes Ah think he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions was on the heel! What? His mama said what about you? Well why was you over there to begin with? Figures they’d need a ride home…he said he was gon’ fix up that van if your daddy and Ah loaned him some money…Ah KNOW! Ah told your daddy he wasn’t bright enough to fix up a van but did he listen to me? That’s right…you’d think he’d learn his lesson bah now…mmhmm…how’s mah grandbabies? What about Brittney’s prom dress? She what? She cain’ go strapless Dot…that boyfriend of hers has some restless hands on him…Ah can see it in his eyes…besides, any grandson of Donita Thompson’s ain’t good enough for mah Brittney…’fore we know it he’d git her knocked up jus’ like what happened to your sister on her prom…did Ah tell you what Donita said to your Daddy and me at the fish fry last weekend? Ah did? That’s right…that’s just what she said…and did Ah tell you what Ah said? Ah did? That’s right…Ah told her how Ah could see right through that dress of hers and she should only wear it on the street corner on Friday nights…Lord…ain’t she ever heard of a slip?”
The dramatic monologue continued to unfold to a captive audience.
“Your sister told you what? There ain’t no way your daddy and me is gonna sell her our house for any less than we would to anyone else…well sure we’d do it for you, baby, but not your sister…Lord, her and that husband of hers…the thought of them living in our house…Ah don’t care if they don’t like the trailer park any more…Ah am gon’ tell her and that husband of hers a thang or two when we git home…Ah KNOW! That’s what AH think!”
Unlike her husband, I did not have the pleasure of experiencing her recounting of the conversation as we took off. Or when we reached cruising altitude. Or during our descent. I did, however, witness her complain to the flight attendant that the plane was too cold. That the blankets were all gone and why didn’t they have more on a plane this big? That her can of Coke was too warm and would melt the ice in the cup and make it all flat.
“When is that baby gon’ stop cryin’?”
“Why cain’t I just stand in line for the bathroom? Do they think AH’M a terrorist?”
“Why is these seats so close together? Lord, mah knee’s gittin’ STIFF.”
At that moment, I longed to know whose life the TV doctor decided to save, his stepmother/mother-in-law, sister/cousin and transvestite nurse/long lost twin brother staring at him with as much melodrama as they could muster, glycerin tears streaming down perfectly tanned cheeks. I realized how lucky they all were, play-pretending on that soap opera. Life and death decisions to be made. Relationships to destroy. Fortunes to lose. And gain by marriage. And lose again by divorce. And gain once more. Rare life-threatening illnesses and injuries from which to recover. Just to relapse on their wedding day.
And then I realized how unlucky we were. Trapped in an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet with a living, breathing soap opera sitting (uncomfortably, of course) in seat 11F.
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