Forty-six: Cruising Attitude

Flight magazines come pretty standard with each wearisome airline experience. A plethora of articles about exotic locations, popular destinations, trendy hotspots. Some have advice for the business traveler. The Southwest mag, Spirit, had an advice feature page which offered tidbits like "travel with a power strip," actually a good one because there are few hotels with suitable pluggage (that's for you MJ). An article about a new board games intrigued me. Snipe-It is a game that comes with a random timer. Questions are asked and the point goes to the last person who answers, not the first. It has the potential for inciting a little bloodshed. I'm going to order it when I get home. A recipe for Hoppin' John followed by an article about the best birding sites in the US, followed by another recipe about the perfect eggnog. Apparently, using granulated sugar makes the ultimate difference as it mellows out the balance between the seven egg yolks, the heavy cream and the whole milk. The recipe comes from City Tavern of Philadelphia home of that other cardiac arrest delight, the Philly Cheesesteak. The variety of articles fascinated me. I sat there, glum and sullen from a ninety minute delay in boarding, and grew even more grumpy upon discovering that someone completed the easy crossword puzzled and left me with the challenging one. I began to distract myself by designing my own in-flight magazine articles like "Great Heckling One-Liners During the Safety Information Demo," or "Stretching That Bag of Peanuts For Your Three Hour Flight (one peanut every 11 minutes!)"
Then the puzzles. I'd like to see a visual discrimination puzzle like the ones in Highlights Magazine: Can You Find Your Luggage in the Picture? (There it is, under the homeless man to the left of the construction site!) Also I'd include an art page (Meet Your Flight Attendants), where you design garments and facial features for the illustrations of a male and female flight attendant. If I had a Sharpie on that page, everyone would get a unibrow, an extra nipple and everyone, without exception, would lose a limb and gets their mouth sewn up because after endless delays, uncomfortable seating and a customer service mantra that supports a fusion of condescension and indifference, the last thing I want to hear as I leave is that blantantly insincere "Buh-bye, thank you!"