Practice Makes Perfect

This weekend, I heard the funniest thing I've heard on an airplane in a while. As I've already mentioned in an earlier post, I have chosen this year to embrace summer flying and find joy and inspiration rather than horror and ennui in airplanes full of never-flying knuckleheads (not to mention airplanes full of hot, barely-legal jocks in their hella baggy shorts who never fly but are being dragged along by their folks for one last Forced Family Fun Vacation before they leave for school in the Fall) and this little Unaccompanied Minor yesterday gave me a firm shove in the right direction.

The woman who requested that I move her to a wider seat in coach, as if we have a variety of seat sizes from which to pick and choose (not saying that we shouldn't, but have you ever been on an airplane before?), does not warrant a special mention, nor does the family of the woman that was fretting about their connection to Buffalo as she was being wheeled off the airplane by paramedics. But this morning I was loitering around the boarding door at the start of an early Chicago to Denver departure when the Customer Service Representative, who had already gone to lengths to establish herself as something of a comedienne, brings this little blond-headed kid, maybe 8 years old, onto the airplane. It's Ryan (or whatever his name was)'s first time on an airplane! she announced. We all oohed and aahed and kicked off the requisite fuss, but the kid stopped us short. We have an airplane seat at my house, he announced with a never-fear tone, and I've been practicing. Practicing? How have you been practicing, the CSR wanted to know. By going like this? Here she launched into what I'm sure was meant to be her least-demeaning impression of a combination flight attendant/Price is Right model pointing out exits and dishwashers. No, the kid tells her. He's dead serious: I've just been sitting still in it for two hours at a time.

He got good at it, too; we never heard a peep out of him. I, on the other hand, laughed the whole way home.