Reflections: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Why do I love to travel? Because I’m Sagittarius. According to Cosmopolitan magazine, “(Sagittarius) LOVE to get out there and roam around discovering new places, cultures, and people…they are the zodiac’s great adventurer.” I totally agree. Even as a kid, I had a wanderlust. I would befriend any foreign kid who showed up at my school. I was like an ambassador and my friend group looked like the United Nations. That’s how I traveled before I could travel. 

In sixth grade I made a friend from Vietnam, Phoung. Every Saturday, she went and watched Vietnamese movies, and one time, she took me with her. We stayed ALL day! She even packed us lunches. We watched so many movies I lost count, and I got really good at reading subtitles. After about 12 hours, my mom got worried and came to the theater looking for me. She asked if there was a caucasian girl inside. The theater was PACKED with Vietnamese. They all started whispering, passing on the message until Phoung said, “Your mom’s here.” 

Phoung had a very sad story. She was one of “the boat people.” Her parents put her and her siblings on a boat, most likely to never see them again. Can you imagine that kind of desperation? As a mother, I cannot. It gets worse. Her brother died on the journey and they had to bury him at sea.

Sometimes we have refugees onboard our planes. I remember one family from Africa. I have never seen people sleep like that before. They were so totally exhausted, it looked like they had no bones in their bodies. Another time, I had a refugee family from Burma on their fourth and final leg of their journey. Everyone kept addressing the little girl insisting she knew a little English. I looked at her and knew she didn’t know any English. But on day zero of being in America, she was already carrying the weight of her whole family on her little-kid shoulders. Nobody was at the airport to meet them. They were supposed to be greeted by a representative from a Christian organization. But no one was there. Refugees are very brave people. 

One thing I love about my job is that everyone gets on an airplane: refugees, diplomats, prisoners, Nobel laureates, opera singers, rappers, athletes, rock stars, people going to weddings, people going to funerals, babies coming to America to be adopted, soldiers going to war, or more happily, returning home. And I’ve had the privilege of meeting them all. I love working with the public. They’re full of surprises and everyday is different because people are fascinating and unpredictable.

There is no typical day. It wouldn’t be unusual to cook and serve dinner, stop to dump out a passenger’s colostomy bag, and then pop back in the galley to bake cookies for dessert. Here’s a crazy story -Once I had an asshole onboard, I requested a supervisor meet the flight because I knew he was connecting. I didn’t want to inflict him onto another crew. But instead of a supervisor greeting us, the police showed up, and they were pretty rough with him. I told the officer that I thought something got lost in translation that his behavior had been disruptive but not criminal. The policeman said they weren’t really there for us. They were actually waiting for the flight to come into the gate next door because a major league baseball umpire had bitten a flight attendant in the stomach!

My most memorable encounters with passengers were with two grandmas and two assholes. Should I start with the grandmas or the assholes? They’re all sad stories, so it doesn’t really matter. 

The first grandma I met told me she was flying out to see her family because her teenage granddaughter had just been raped. There was no buildup. She just blurted it out -kind of like I just did. The second grandma I sat next to started crying and told me that she was going to her family because her thirteen-year-old grandson had just died. He had been found with the dog’s leash around his neck. She couldn’t understand how that had happened. But I suspected that I knew. I knew that he had most likely been masturbating and had made a terrible, tragic miscalculation. 

Sometimes pain sits so heavy on your heart, the weight makes it hard to breathe, and talking about it offers the tiniest relief, even if it’s to a stranger. Flight attendants, who are often strangers, have a tradition of over-sharing with one another. We call it “jumpseat therapy.” But I think that impulse extends beyond the jumpseat, and the pain those two grandmothers felt and shared has stayed with me to this day. 

The two assholes’ stories are similar, as well. Only a few rows in the airplane have armrests that lift towards the aisle. We need those to get paraplegic passengers into a seat because they have to be dragged. You can see where this story is going. Asshole number one didn’t want to give up his aisle seat so that a teenage paraplegic boy and his dad struggling to lift him into the seat could sit in the only row on the plane that would accommodate him. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry you’re going to be inconvenienced for an hour or two, but this boy is going to be inconvenienced for the rest of his life, ASSHOLE!”

The second asshole didn’t want to move his seat either. I explained to him that a Make-A-Wish family needed to sit together. The little boy was visibly sick. He was very weak, his hair was patchy with big bald spots, his color, grey. This asshole could see that. They were right in front of him. He said, “My heart goes out to them, really, but… if you have a first-class seat, I wouldn’t mind moving.”  The voice in my head said, “Your heart goes out to them? Really, what heart? If I had a first-class seat available I would give it to them. You’re THE LAST person I’d put in first class, ASSHOLE!” 

Those two were the worst examples of humanity I’ve come across in twenty-eight years. Sure, I’ve witnessed and even been on the receiving end of bad behavior plenty of times. But these two encounters were the most disappointing experiences of my career. 

But I can’t end the story there on such a heavy, negative note. Oh no. As a Sagittarius prone to positivity, I must also tell you about some wonderful encounters with passengers, many of whom bring gifts. Often people literally come bearing gifts for the crew. Mostly it’s chocolate. See’s is everyone’s favorite. Sometimes it’s homemade cookies, banana bread, one time a platter of sushi. Often times it’s promotional gear, and occasionally, it’s cash. Once a passenger gave me $100 just ‘cuz. Tickets are another common and generous gift. My favorite was for the Rockettes Christmas show. No, that was my second favorite. My favorite was the tickets and backstage passes to The Gypsy Kings. I used to always pack a little black dress, just in case. But, as of today’s date, my two favorite gifts I’ve ever received from a passenger were both bouquets: One a bouquet of peacock feathers! The other, a more traditional bouquet of flowers. 

The gentleman who sent me a bouquet of flowers had wanted a beer, but he said his wallet was in his checked bag. So, I just gave it to him. And then, he sent me a bouquet of flowers! Of course, I never got them. They sat on my supervisor’s desk for almost a week until I passed back through my base. And then I just left them there because how could I carry a bouquet of flowers with me on my trip? Nevertheless, that’s the one that means the most. That unclaimed bouquet of flowers reminds me that a simple act can potentially have a big impact. You just never know. Are there people who try to take advantage? Of course. My personal favorite: the passenger paying for his drinks with Xerox copies of drink chits. But who cares? Last week I attended church at St. Patrick’s in New York City. In the homily, the priest said that we may not agree with someone’s actions, but we should never judge their motivations. Good advice for a flight attendant, I think. I’m pretty sure he was talking to me.