What's Up With That?

by Tom Kuzeja - September 20, 1999

What's Up With That?

My name is Tom, Airline Troublemaker

I'm coming to realize that air travel is a great source of story telling for me mostly because of all the things that happen to me when I take a simple trip. Most recently, I seemed to have a problem with this one male flight attendant. Apparently this guy has endured a career in a field not known for its Arnold Swartzenegger types so he had to demonstrate to me and others what a he man he was. Politely. That was the worst part of it all. It was done very politely. Bastard!

I'm sitting there getting ready for take off. I'm finally relaxed and comfortable with my knees jammed into my chest and elbows velcro'ed to my ribs feeling all proud of myself because I am not invading any other passengers' personal space. The flight attendants began their runthrough of the safety rules, you know, the "Hey this is how YOU fasten a SEATBELT" thing. That was when I made the cruicial mistake: I placed the headset of an electronic device onto my head.

That was when "Flight Attendant Lance" (his real identity has been changed) signaled the lone female flight attendant, who was calling the instruction on the intercom in back, to pause for a second.

So Lance slowly walks toward me and all heads, including mine, are tracking him as he walks down the aisle. I didn't really have to move my head at all because he was walking right toward me. The electronic device I put on my head is an active noise cancellation headset. It's designed to be used on planes. Huh... fancy that. Basically, it creates sound that cancels out most of the loud and disturbing low frequency noise generated by loud and disturbine jet engines, a couple of which seem to be strapped to every wing of any jet I've ever been on. Lance did not want me using this device.

So Lance is standing next to me in the aisle and like everyone else, I'm still tracking this guy except I'm the only person on the flight who is now crosseyed because Lance is bending down to get face to face with me. Oh so politely Lance says to me "Shut that off and remove the headset from your head."

My first reaction was that of any normal, embarassed, adult male. I wanted to reply with "Bite me!" or "I'm sorry. but I'm not currently dating" but instead I came back with the ever popular "Exsqueeze me?"

This was a mistake.

Lance repeated his request with a little more volume and enthusiasm. Reluctantly, I removed the headset from my ears and in my usual sarcastic manner, I switched the device which had up to this point been "Off" to "On" just for my own personal satisfaction. Yeah, the pilot's gyroscope may have shifted a few degrees due to the awesome amounts of electronic interference being generated by my headset with its 1.5V AAA battery, but I'd have the last laugh. I could almost see the interviews with the crash survivors... "Everything was fine until this jerk in seat 13D flipped on his noise cancelling headset. That's when the jet suddenly lurched toward the ground..."

I wouldn't have been so bothered were it not for the guy in front of me with his freaking laptop computer on (no lie)! Lance let him alone. This guy's sitting in front of me and he was running some application called "Incredible Amounts of Electronic Jamming Noise Generation Application" or something like that with a screen saver of a Boeing 737 cockpit getting scambled. Either that or he was running Microsoft Word... it's difficult to tell the difference. In either event, he never incurred Lance's wrath.

As much as I wanted to tattle on Mr. Laptop, I didn't. And we all landed fine just the same. But I got even with Lance in the end. Upon leaving the jet, in front of the flight crew, I handed him a business card that I had lifted from Mr. Laptop's briefcase. As I gave him a wink, I told Lance, "Call me".

I'm pretty sure the slap I heard as I walked up the jetway came from the other male flight attendant.

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