Only in America

We drove down La Cienega to the airport and went through security. It wasn’t too bad. Now the eight-hour flight to Florida. We weren’t disabled or children, so we were last to board but we sat in bulkhead seats so I could slouch in my seat and Hanna could stretch her legs.

“That was some trip, wasn’t it?” Hanna said as the preflight information came on.

“I wish they taught emergency procedures of an airplane in school so we would not have to sit through it every time we flew,” I said.

“Would you have passed the test?”

“Hey, I was a great student in high school with vast potential,” I replied defensively.

“Honey, stop,” Hanna said sensing I was hurt.

“I wasn’t a failure my entire life,” I added still fuming.

“Honey, I was just making a joke. I was only kidding.”

I remained silent. The stewardess came by and told me to fasten my seat belt.

“I thought you knew all this stuff,” Hanna said to me.

I obediently put my seat belt on and sat straight in the seat which felt like a dentist’s chair. I was getting it from both ends. Something about sex turns lovers that are friends into antagonists. As soon as you penetrate. Either sex. And clearly, that was what was happening here.

Hanna broke the silence. “I liked your brother. He is funny,” she said.

“Yeah. He jokes that he never has sex,” I said. With that the teenage girl behind me with a nose ring and a belly ring laughed. Then Hanna and I laughed.

“Shhh,” she said through her laughter, and we both shared a sardonic giggle.

The stewardess brought over peanuts and a drink which was supposed to keep us satisfied on the eight-hour flight. “Whatever happened to hot meals and the smoking section?” I screamed to the stewardess.

“Ma’am, I don’t make the rules, I just work here,” she answered back like a drill sergeant.

I could remember solo flights I took from Los Angeles to New York smoking my brains out in the smoking section. No one bothered me nor I them. The flight would go so fast. I never watch movies onboard. It was impossible to relax on a plane. That occurred in the old days, in the 60s when flying was a luxury and the airlines people treated you with respect. Now, after 9/11 everyone was deemed a potential terrorist or just a plain pain in the ass.